SAIC Faculty FAQs

A union is a group of workers who come together to negotiate a contract and make real change in their workplace. A union is us! We — all non-tenure track faculty (lecturers and adjuncts) at SAIC — comprise our union, and by banding together, we can amplify our voices, secure long-overdue leverage and legal backing, and claim our power to bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. 

School leadership will be required by law — regulated and enforced by the National Labor Relations Board (a branch of the federal government) — to negotiate with us in good faith. Remember when we were left with no legal recourse, after our multi-year contracts were stripped by the Administration during the height of the pandemic? Or, when the School walked away and ceased negotiating with the PT Concerns Committee? Our union is the most powerful (and legally protected) means we have to negotiate with the Administration as equals, ensuring we have a real seat at the table, a stronger voice in determining our future, and a more equitable role at SAIC. Our union is how we empower ourselves.

AFSCME is the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, which represents 1.6 million workers across the country, including academics, librarians, public servants, museum employees, editors, curators, and arts workers. Our union is affiliated with AFSCME Council 31.

Cultural Workers United (part of AFSCME) connects and serves as a nexus for organized and soon-to-be organized cultural workers (like us!) to come together, share experiences, set more equitable standards, and fight for common legislative and political goals. Recently, workers at MOCA, PMA, and Walker Art Center demanded and won their seat at the table. You can learn more at www.culturalworkersunited.org.

Art Institute of Chicago Workers United (AICWU) is the voice for workers at SAIC and AIC, comprised of non-tenure-track faculty, along with Museum and School staff. We know that by standing together, in solidarity with our colleagues, we can powerfully transform our working conditions, for the betterment of all.

Art Institute of Chicago Workers United (AICWU) currently consists of two bargaining units: one for the Museum staff, and another for the School staff. Our faculty union would be a separate *third* bargaining unit. This gives us the flexibility to negotiate and tailor our contract to fit our specific needs, while also empowering SAIC/AIC workers by giving us wall-to-wall union protections, uniting all workers across both institutions!

There have been two significant organizing campaigns at SAIC, dating as far back as the early 2000s. Both campaigns were highly successful: the first led to Adjuncts winning institutional benefits (i.e., health insurance), and the second secured our Multi-Year Contracts (MYC) and an increased PCR (per course rate). Organizing works! The bad news? Without our union, these wins can easily be frozen or stripped away from us, just as quickly as they were given. We have seen this time and time again: the gutting of our MYCs, the implementation of course caps, the freezing of PCR increases, and the refusal of promotions to Assistant Professor, Adj. (and the benefits that come with it). The good news? Everything seems impossible, until it happens. Now is the time to join our staff colleagues at the Museum and School, and take our seat.

The PT Reps and Faculty Senate aren’t going anywhere. We deeply value the critical work our PT Reps do for non-tenure-track faculty at the School. Our union will give a stronger voice to non-tenure-track faculty in shared governance, and provide our elected Representatives with legally binding power to advocate for better conditions in all areas of the School, beyond the contract we negotiate: curricular involvement, technology, and long-range planning, to name a few. 

The bottom line: WE are the union, and WE are building this union, together. We get to decide the type of community and culture we want — our solidarity can enact the structural changes we’ve all been fighting to achieve.

We went public in May 2022, which means in the months since, your colleagues may have reached out to you, asking you to stand with us in solidarity and sign your union card. Think of these authorization cards as pulling the lever for a union election: these cards are collected by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to make sure non-tenure-track faculty want a union. After we file a significant percentage of faculty cards with the NLRB, it will trigger an election. Typically, 4-8 weeks after we file, we will all vote on whether we want our Union to represent us, which means we elect a non-tenure-track faculty team to collectively bargain our wages, benefits, and working conditions. No one from the Administration will know you have signed a card, and nobody will know how you vote. You can sign a card digitally here.

Yes! Organizing a union is our right, and this right is protected by federal law (the National Labor Relations Act). Learn more about your rights here! It is illegal for the Administration to discriminate against us, in any way, for exercising these rights. It is also illegal for management to make any unilateral changes to your working conditions after we have gone public, and we will file Unfair Labor Practice charges against them if there is any form of retaliation. For instance, if a union supporter usually teaches a certain number of courses, sees them cut, and feels that they are being discriminated against, they can contact any member of the Solidarity Committee, or our AFSCME organizers: Shane Anderson (773-332-7804); Alberto Melchor (312-641-6060 ext. 5804); and Katie Dozier (317-869-6699).

Without signing a card, you won’t be able to vote on our contract. More voting members means a stronger union and better contract for all, and signing sooner rather than later gets us that much closer to our union election — and a fair contract.

We’ll likely vote by mail, though the Administration may try to force an in-person election. In the likelihood of voting by mail, a ballot will be sent to the home address you have on file with SAIC. After a window of time, the votes will be tabulated — winning the election means getting the support of 50 percent of the certified ballots, plus one vote.

Remember, WE ARE THE UNION! When we vote to organize, we will then elect, from amongst the non-tenure-track faculty, a committee to represent us in contract negotiations with the School. AICWU will provide a Chief Negotiator (trained in all legalities) and a Staff Representative (a professional at negotiating contracts) to provide guidance with contract language, but we are the ones negotiating our contract, by means of democratically electing a group of our colleagues, who will then extensively survey all union members before negotiating, so we fight on behalf of all of us, for what we really want. 

Wages, benefits, and working conditions: the heart of a contract! What that looks like exactly is up to us: fair pay and access to benefits; opportunities for growth and enrichment of our pedagogical and professional practices; actionable commitment and timely responses to our concerns about equity, inclusion, diversity, and justice; and increased transparency and accountability from those making the decisions that affect our livelihoods, to name a few. Through bargaining surveys and listening sessions, we’ll be able to gain a better understanding of the needs of our individual members and fight for changes that meaningfully improve our position at the school. Please voice your opinions and needs through these channels for the benefit of all!

With a union, management must legally bargain in good faith over conditions of our employment — including compensation, promotions, health insurance, the terms and length of our contract, and more — and benefits cannot be modified without our agreement. Administration is required by law to negotiate in good faith. We will only bargain up from what we currently have. Without the legal protections of unionization, there is nothing to prevent senior administration from eliminating existing benefits. We have seen the unilateral cancellation of lecturer promotions, as well as the MYCs that were offered as a concession to our previous efforts to organize. Our union will hold the School to their word. We will no longer be forced to rely on the administration to keep promises that were never legally binding.

After the election, our next steps will be filling out a bargaining survey, holding listening sessions, and nominating/ electing our bargaining team. 

We are a union of non-tenure-track faculty across the school, lecturers and adjuncts alike, from all departments. Collectively, we do more than two-thirds of the teaching at SAIC. Our strength comes from our numbers. Divided, the Administration will pit us against one another. In solidarity, we can lift ourselves up together! Our Union will elect its bargaining team from across the school, both by title and department, to make sure that the needs and interests of all parties are heard — and amplified.

It depends! One of the main factors influencing how quickly a contract is arrived at is the level of participation — more active union members put us in the best position to succeed. Most first contracts take around a year to negotiate, sometimes more and sometimes less. The bargaining team at the Walker, for instance, ratified their first contract after just seven months of negotiating.

The minimum rate for dues is $9.67 per check if you're teaching one class a semester; $14.26 per check if you're teaching two classes a semester; and  $19.06 per check if you're teaching three or more classes a semester. You do not pay dues if you are not teaching. Our union will vote to decide whether or not to increase our dues above any minimums in order to provide more revenue for our local union. Nobody pays dues until after we’ve bargained our contract, and all of our members have had to look and see, in black and white, what our raises and benefits will be. We always bargain up from where we are now. What we gain in pay increases will significantly surpass the amount of dues — or we simply won’t vote for the contract. 

Strikes only occur if we vote collectively to go on strike. It is our biggest bargaining chip to make leadership listen to our voices. A strike will not happen unless a large majority of our union votes to strike.

Better teaching conditions create better learning conditions. Our colleagues will become more involved as they learn how we gain agency through our union. The positive impact will be systemic, creating greater levels of accountability, trust, communication, security, and stability. Hoo baby!

POC are subject to more instability in the workplace rather than less. The administration has not worked to sustain, regularly consult, or engage BIPOC faculty, outside of the occasional social event or meal. AICWU wants to reflect the City of Chicago, not the failures of our administration — and not only in our student body, but also in our faculty, ensuring that SAIC is a safe, productive place for people of color at all levels, whether they are a freshman, graduate student, or a faculty member. If you’re non-tenure-track faculty at SAIC and identify as BIPOC, we’d love to have you join our ever-growing BIPOC committee. Bottom line: AICWU wants to do the work to emphasize that valuing and prioritizing equity, diversity, inclusion make a more just institution for us all.

Some of us have done great work through the School’s current models of shared governance and various action committees, advocating for better working conditions, intersectional engagement, greater diversity, and increased commitment to inclusive practices. A lot of effort has been put in to envision a better school for faculty, staff, and students. But within the current structure, there is nothing to hold the School accountable — the higher level administration will listen to us, and will sometimes make promises in response, but without the backing of our union there is no rigorous legal structure in place to make sure those promises are kept. It may have seemed a few years ago that a union was not necessary, because the School gave us a number of things to deter unionization. But due to our lack of a union, the School has been able to degrade those improvements over time, without sufficient transparency or the sufficient participation of shared governance. Whatever we win without a union is something we can later lose. 

We all want to work with colleagues who care about their job. A legally binding contract means we are getting paid adequately to care. A contract can require mentorship to support new faculty, which helps them become engaged members of our community. A contract guarantees due process and fairness in employment evaluations. Unfortunately, a contract doesn't prevent somebody who's truly awful from keeping their job. Discipline is management’s responsibility, and when they abdicate they may blame the union to evade accountability. This is why joining together as non-tenure-track faculty *and* workers — seeing and supporting one another — is so imperative.