Contract Negotiations Status

Illinois State and Union Economic Proposals

The University’s goal is for tenure-track faculty, at every rank/title and across their career, to be compensated in a manner that is competitive with the average for our peer institutions, while also ensuring the long-term viability of Illinois State and its ability to provide excellent and affordable educational opportunities for all students.

At our negotiation session on Friday, March 28, 2025, Illinois State presented an on the record revised economic package to the Union. Under this proposal, by the first full month following ratification, the average salary for assistant and associate professors will be at or above the projected market averages for similar positions at Illinois State’s peer institutions—and, by January 1, 2027, the average salary for all Illinois State tenure-track faculty will be at or above the projected market averages for similar positions at Illinois State’s peer institutions. NOTE: These projections reflect both an annual salary increase of 2.7% at Illinois State’s peer institutions (which is the average increase reported by AAUP over the last 10 years) and an adjustment for the lower local cost-of-living in Bloomington-Normal relative to the cost of living at peer institution locations.

The University’s March 28, 2025, on-the-record offer includes multiple compensation enhancements, including:

• Guaranteed annual funding pools to support two annual opportunities to increase base salaries for tenure-track faculty of 3.75% at the first day of the first full month following ratification. 3.25% in Fiscal Year 2026, 2027 and 2028.
• A guaranteed, across-the-board annual salary increase for all tenure-track faculty over a proposed four-year contract of 2.50% on the first day of the first full month after ratification, of 2.00% on January 1, 2026, on January 1, 2027, and on January 1, 2028. This annual base salary increase is not performance-based.
  
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• A guaranteed funding pool to support additional merit-based salary increases to tenure-track faculty members. Each academic department would be allocated a merit pool equivalent to a percentage of base salaries for its assistant, associate, and full professors in their department. Specific merit-based salary increases for individuals in these positions in each department would be determined jointly by their department chairs and peer tenured faculty, as is current practice. This merit pool would be funded at 1.25% on the first day of the first full month after ratification and 1.25% again on January 1, 2026, January 1, 2027, and January 1, 2028.
• A new merit-based salary increase that will be available to all Illinois State tenured Professors every fifth year after being promoted to full Professor. This pool would be established in academic years 2025-2026, 2026-2027, and 2027-2028 at a funding level equivalent to 1.50% of base salaries for all eligible Full Professors and would be awarded at the discretion of academic affairs leadership.
• IMPROVED: Promotional increases, including:
• A $2,000 increase to annual base salaries of all current Professors who were promoted from the rank of Associate Professor during their tenure at Illinois State, effective on first day of the first full month after ratification.
• A $2,500 increase to annual base salaries of all current Associate Professors who were promoted from the rank of Assistant Professor during their tenure at Illinois State, effective on first day of the first full month after ratification.
• IMPROVED: Moving forward, Illinois State will award promotional salary increases of $7,500 (currently, $5,000) to those being promoted from Assistant to Associate Professor and $10,000 (currently, $8,000) to those being promoted from Associate to Professor.
• Salary increases for honorary titles:
• A $6,000 increase in annual base salary effective on the date of change in title from Professor to the honorary title of University Professor
• A $8,000 increase in annual base salary effective on the date of change in title from Professor to the honorary title of Distinguished Professor.
• A $2,000 increase in annual base salary effective on the date of change in honorary title from University Professor to the honorary title of Distinguished Professor.
• A $500,000 allocation in both Fiscal Years 2027 and 2028 for individual market rate adjustments to the annual base salaries for Associate Professors and Professors.
• For the first time, effective on the first day of the first full month after ratification, the establishment of minimum entry-level annual base salaries for each tenure-track faculty rank, to guide compensation for new Assistant Professors, Associate Professors and Professors moving forward.
• Effective August 16, 2025, the University will establish minimum per-credit-hour overload compensation for additional teaching responsibilities beyond regularly assigned duties of $2,000 per credit hour for Assistant Professors, $2,200 for Associate Professors, and $2,400 for Professors. Individual departments may choose to pay above these minimums.
• Effective August 16, 2025, the University will establish minimum per-credit-hour compensation for teaching responsibilities for summer and winter terms of $2,000 per credit hour for Assistant Professors, $2,200 for Associate Professors, and $2,400 for Professors. Individual departments may choose to pay above these minimums.
• Four weeks (20 business days) of paid parental leave for all tenure-track faculty. This new benefit, which would become effective on July 1, 2027, could be combined with other existing paid benefit time that can already be used for parental leave to extend the leave beyond 4 weeks. Other existing paid benefit time includes both non-accrued time (20 days of extended sick time; 20 days of sick leave bank time, if enrolled; 5 days of non-accruing personal plus time) and the employees own accrued sick leave.
• Beginning in Academic Year 2026-2027, tenured faculty will be eligible for a full-year sabbatical to be paid at 66.7% of their annual base salary after six academic years of teaching.

The Union’s last on the record economic proposals from March 24, 2025, include wage increases that would, within 33 months, pay Illinois State faculty as much as 17% over the projected average salaries of tenured and tenure-track faculty at peer institutions, depending upon faculty rank. Under the Union’s March 24 proposal, over the next 33 months, the average employee in the bargaining unit will have received at least a 28% increase in their base pay—approximately 10% per year.

Infographic: Salary and Parental Leave Comparisons

Identifying Illinois State’s Peer Institutions

As the parties continue mediation and work to reach agreement, it is critical that the parties look at the most appropriate set of peer institutions to ensure that the Illinois State tenure-track faculty are paid fairly as compared to faculty performing similar work under similar conditions.

The Union has indicated that its compensation expectations are based on average salaries from a data set sourced from the American Association of University Professors (which is affiliated with the Union) that includes all U.S. public colleges and universities that grant doctoral degrees, including over 100 Carnegie Classification R1 (very high research) institutions, such as University of Michigan, UC-Berkeley, and University of Illinois Chicago. Illinois State is not an R1 school but is instead classified as an R2 (high research) school.

The Union has acknowledged this and other challenges in the AAUP data set, including:

• The inclusion of director/department chair salaries (chairs and directors are not in the ISU bargaining unit).
• The inclusion of salaries for professors in medical schools, law schools, and other highly-paid professional programs (that Illinois State does not have).
• The inclusion of ten-month academic year salaries (Illinois State’s academic year is nine months).
• No consideration of the widely varying cost of living in the various locations of the institutions.

Significantly, professors at R1 universities are generally paid more than professors at R2 universities, like Illinois State, because R1 institutions are much more research-intensive, receive significantly more funding, and have much higher scholarly activity requirements for their professors. In contrast, at R2 institutions, like Illinois State, the focus is more evenly distributed between teaching and research.

Illinois State has gone to great lengths to identify an appropriate set of comparator institutions for compensation purposes, relying on data from a neutral third party, focusing on other public R2 universities in the Midwest, and further focusing only on the compensation paid to tenure-track faculty teaching in the same disciplines as those offered by Illinois State. The University’s economic proposals have been and will continue to be benchmarked against this more comparable data set.

Please click the button below for an apples-to-apples comparison of average salaries for Illinois State’s tenure-track faculty and those at our peer institutions—Carnegie Classification public R2 (High Research) universities in the U.S. Census Bureau Midwest region.

Infographic: Apples-to-Apples on Faculty Salaries

Illinois State's Financial Reality

Illinois State University’s recently released financial audit for Fiscal Year 2024, prepared by an independent CPA firm on behalf of the Office of the Auditor General, provides an unbiased and verified analysis of the University’s revenue, expenses and net position that must be considered in its financial planning and projections, including commitments made through collective bargaining.

While the audit findings show that University’s net consolidated funds are positive (the FY24 financial statements show an increase in Net Assets across all funds of $14.2 million), this number cannot be viewed in isolation—it is essential to look at the performance of individual funds. The $14.2 net asset increase reflects both:

• A surplus of $21.3 million in the capital assets and restricted funds, which are not available to pay the wages of the University’s tenure-track faculty, and
• A deficit of $7.1 million in the unrestricted funds that provide the vast majority of Illinois State’s faculty and staff wages, salaries, and expenditures

Unfortunately, the deficit in Illinois State’s unrestricted funds has continued to worsen. In FY23, the unrestricted fund deficit was $4.6 million. This continued deterioration of the University’s unrestricted fund deficit is driven by inflationary pressures that have caused expenditures to outpace revenues, among other factors. The current trajectory of the increasing annual unrestricted fund deficit is not sustainable and must be addressed for Illinois State to avoid the fate of many of its higher education counterparts who have faced similar challenges.

In September 2024, Illinois State implemented a comprehensive strategy (RISE—Resilience, Innovation, Sustainability and Excellence) to support the University’s long-term financial stability. RISE included a number of strategies that were immediately put in place to close the gap between revenue and expenses, including mandated divisional budget holdbacks, hiring reductions, deferral of non-urgent projects, and reduction in out-of-cycle and additional pay increases.

Background and Timeline

On January 8, 2024, the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board certified the University Professionals of Illinois, United Faculty of ISU (UFISU), as the official bargaining representative for approximately 650 non-administrative tenured and tenure-track Illinois State faculty. On February 28, 2024, the parties began negotiations and have since met almost weekly to discuss wages and other terms and conditions of employment for a first contract.

On January 13, 2025, the parties met for the first time with an independent federal mediator appointed by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). The parties have since met for additional mediation sessions on January 31, February 5, February 10, February 28, March 10, March 19 and March 24, 2025. On March 26, 2025, the parties were notified that the Federal mediator would no longer be available to assist the parties in these negotiations, as a March 14, 2025, Executive Order reduced the size and scope of the FMCS and ended support to public-sector negotiations. Beginning with the negotiation session on March 28, 2025, all negotiations will continue directly between the University and the Union. Additional negotiating sessions are scheduled for April 2, April 3 and April 4.

Progress to Date

Through negotiations and now with the mediator's guidance, the parties have reached tentative agreements covering the following topics, while making significant progress on the remaining open issues:

• Academic Freedom
• Assignment of Duties
• Disability Accommodations
• Discipline
• Duration
• Electronic Availability of the Agreement
• Entire Agreement
• Facilities
• Grievance Procedure
• Group Health Insurance Benefits
• Health and Safety
• Identification of Union Representatives
• Intellectual Property
• International Faculty
• Labor/Management Meetings
• Layoffs
• Legislative Affairs
• Limitations and Savings
• Management Rights
• No Strike/No Lock-Out
• Non-Discrimination
• Personnel Files and Records
• Policies and Procedures
• Program Reorganization, Consolidation, or Disestablishment
• Purpose
• Reappointment, Evaluation, Promotion, Tenure, and Post-Tenure Review
• Recognition
• Revisions to Previous Tentative Agreements
• Shared Governance
• Transfers
• Union Dues
• Union Rights
• Workload