Faculty and staff across City Colleges of Chicago are poised to announce a strike date this week, with Cook County College Teachers Union Local 1600 planning to picket outside Harold Washington College ahead of Thursday's City Colleges Board of Trustees meeting. The union says it remains far from reaching an agreement with the district despite negotiating since February, and members overwhelmingly authorized a walkout in a vote that ran September 18–23.
According to the Chicago Tribune, the union will announce its strike date if no deal is reached during the board meeting Thursday. The two sides have been negotiating with a federal mediator, but Local 1600 president Tony Johnston has cautioned that the strong strike-authorization numbers alone won't settle the dispute. “This vote gives our negotiating teams real leverage at the table. But the vote itself doesn’t win us a fair contract,” Johnston said, per the same report. Faculty and professional staff contracts expired July 15, and the union has been pressing its case since.
Union turnout for the strike vote was substantial. The Illinois Federation of Teachers reported that 1,324 of 1,446 eligible faculty and staff members cast ballots, a 91.6% turnout, with 96% voting in favor. That aligns with the Tribune's reporting of roughly 91% turnout among the district's eligible workforce during the September 18–23 voting period.
What the Union Is Demanding
Local 1600's list of asks goes beyond pay. Per the Tribune's reporting, the union is seeking wage increases reflecting current economic conditions, reduced class sizes, fewer barriers to enrollment, and protections against artificial intelligence replacing instructors in the classroom. It is also pushing for free developmental education and non-credit coursework for students who need it.
The AI protections build on recent state action. The American Association of University Professors reported that Governor JB Pritzker signed House Bill 1859 in August 2025, initiated in partnership with Local 1600, amending the Illinois Community College Act to require that every course at an Illinois community college be taught by a credentialed human instructor.
The union's push for free developmental education targets a specific financial-aid problem. Per the Illinois Federation of Teachers release, negotiators say the demand is meant to keep low-income students from burning through federal and state financial aid on non-credit remedial courses before they even reach degree-creditable classes.
A Legal Clock Once the Notice Is Filed
Illinois law sets firm boundaries on when a walkout can actually begin. Under the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act, as detailed by Justia Law, public educational employees cannot strike until at least 10 calendar days have passed after a written notice of intent to strike is filed with the employer and the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board. An announcement at Thursday's board meeting would not itself start the period; the 10-day clock begins after that written notice is filed with both.
City Colleges spokesperson Veronica Resa struck a hopeful tone in a statement to the Tribune, saying the district “looks forward to finalizing agreements with faculty and professional staff.” The system serves more than 73,000 students annually, per its own website, across seven main campuses — Harold Washington, Harry S Truman, Kennedy-King, Malcolm X, Olive-Harvey, Richard J. Daley, and Wilbur Wright — plus five satellite sites, under Chancellor Juan Salgado, who has led the system since 2017.
Echoes of the 2022 Standoff
This isn't the first time Local 1600 has taken a strike vote to the brink. Reporting from WTTW News in October 2022 showed the union had set a November 2 strike date that year following a 92% authorization vote, only to avert the walkout by reaching a four-year contract deal with City Colleges late on October 30, 2022 — the very agreement whose terms expired this past July.
Local 1600 represents more than 5,000 members across 25 college chapters in Cook County, including full-time and adjunct faculty, professional staff, and classified employees, and is affiliated with both the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers.
Beyond the current contract fight, the Cook County College Teachers Union has supported an elected board, with Chicago Public Schools' governance model as a precedent. That governance push sits alongside decades of institutional change at City Colleges. A historical account from the Stanford Social Innovation Review describes enrollment falling from 210,000 in 1985 to 157,000 by 2000, alongside the district's Reinvention initiative.
For now, all eyes are on Thursday's board meeting, where the union says it will make its next move public. Whether federal mediation can produce a breakthrough before any 10-day countdown begins remains an open question for students and staff across all seven campuses.
