User:NorthShoreLoon/Columbia College Chicago

Adjunct Faculty Strike
From October 30th to December 17th of 2023, the Columbia College Faculty Union (also known as CFAC), took part in the longest adjunct faculty strike in US labor history. The strike was for 49 days.

The CFAC represents approximately 600 part-time faculty members, or approximately two-thirds of the total faculty.

The foremost reason the strike took place was because over 50 courses from the Fall semester and over 300 courses from the Spring semester were intended to be cut. The majority of these courses were being taught by adjunct faculty. This caused alarm for both faculty and students, because the cuts would increase class sizes, despite small class sizes being a large draw for students who chose the college. The decreased number of courses offered would also potentially reduce the amount of selection and availability for students to take courses they needed to graduate. Non-adjunct faculty were concerned that their increased class sizes would overload them with work and that their curriculum would have to change to accommodate a lecture size class, as opposed to the more intimate class setting they were accustomed to.

During the strike, all classes taught by adjunct faculty were not in session. Eventually the college had adjunct faculty who were not striking and full time faculty substitute for the classes that were going untaught.

On December 17th, the CFAC and Columbia College mutually reached a tentative agreement. Then on December 21st the CFAC announced that the agreement was formally approved, thus ending the strike completely.

On December 21st, the college also informed students that they would be refunded $500 for each class they were enrolled in that had been affected by the strike. This refund was given in the form of a deduction on their Spring tuition bill.