NTT Faculty Proposal Guide
Welcome to our Contract Proposal Guide: A basic explainer of the most important proposed articles that have been presented to management over the past 17 months. We’ve drawn from our Bargaining Survey, launched in 2023—as well as the numerous testimonials, group conversations, and informal discussions with myriad faculty—to shape and inform these demands.
Contracts change, and are subject to what happens at the bargaining table. The guide, therefore, is a living document and we hope to update it as negotiations are ongoing. We’ve divided the guide into four basic concepts—Protections, Parity, Stability, and Care. It doesn’t reflect the contract’s actual structure but was devised for readability. In each section there is a statement of our vision for each concept, followed by key points from our proposal. We’ve included a summary of admin's reactions to our proposals.
You, the NTT Faculty, teach 80 percent of all SAIC courses; you mentor students, perform service, and are vital members of this community. We believe that this outlines the contract you deserve.
Your NTT Bargaining Team
STABILITY
Vision: We have been told at the bargaining table that NTT teaching positions are not meant for stability, our jobs were meant to be “transitory,” and this is their school. We know—and you know—that this is not reality: We teach 80 percent of courses at SAIC; they risk taking a huge hit by choosing not to stabilize our working conditions. Precarity may have become a way of life for many of us, but that does not mean we can’t reverse the effects of our adjunctification.
Understanding Layoff Policy
We hate that we even have to consider this, but given the current state of higher education, we’ve learned from other unionized schools that it’s on us to craft a layoff policy that humanizes us and dignifies our work. We have proposed contingency plans for two types of layoffs: full and partial. A full layoff relieves a faculty member of all of their classes for financial—not performance—reasons. A partial layoff is triggered if the school is unable to meet your course baseload for any reason, resulting in shorting you any number of previously-guaranteed classes. Layoff proposals include providing enough notice and compensation so that losing one or more courses would not be catastrophic.
We’ve proposed:
Predictability: A stable work environment where we know what classes we can expect to teach, at a reasonable deadline prior to the beginning of each semester, year-after-year.
Opportunity: Establishing a course bank—wherein we can submit their qualifications and interest in teaching vacant courses—and insisting that our current NTT faculty be given the opportunity to teach available courses, rather than soliciting external hires.
Equitable promotions: A promotions process that is driven by the needs and talents of the faculty who teach here, not by the administration's unwillingness to compensate people fairly for the work they are already doing.
Advancement to Adjunct: More than seven promotions from Lecturer to Assistant Professor, Adj. each year—real percentages, with additional annual promotions available based on attrition.
Removing Course Caps: The School cannot continue hiring faculty it treats as its most disposable, while limiting opportunities for current faculty to achieve stability. The number of new Lecturers hired each year in large departments like Liberal Arts and CP is one consequence; special deals for certain Lecturers—but not others—is another.
Baseload security: We calculate baseloads with an innovative rolling average, by considering the number of courses you have taught over the past 3 years. If you’ve been regularly teaching 4 courses, you are guaranteed 4 courses—and would be fully compensated if this baseload could not be met.
Our big priorities in this area: Significantly overhauling the promotions process, doubling-down on opportunities for adjunct status; stabilizing and increasing course baseloads; lifting the course cap. These are, unsurprisingly, also the hills we will die on.
The admin position
They do not like—or even understand—the idea of a rolling baseload. Lifting the course cap furrows their brows. Overhauling the promotions process is simply not something they are interested in doing. (Unless hiring a new administrator to chaperone applications counts?)
At SAIC, it’s clear that stable working conditions for NTT faculty have been hampered by three conditions:
A close-to-non-functioning promotion process;
The inability to predict what courses we will teach, in any given year;
A cap on how many courses post-2017 Lecturers can teach.
The administration has insisted that our proposals undermine their ability to hire new Lecturers at-will—often at the request of untrained (or even biased) chairs, or as a result of “emergency” situations, where process (and seniority) is thrown out the window. Our proposals repair the damage done by years of austerity policies; the administration believes our proposals constrain their flexibility [power], and insists stabilizing the NTT faculty directly imperils FT hires and can only result in an increase in student tuition. Neither of these things are true!
CARE
Vision: When we say ‘care,’ we mean benefits—health insurance, absolutely— but also ensuring you won’t be penalized for needing to take leave to grow or care for your family. Care extends equally to those of us facing or contemplating retirement, as well as to younger NTT faculty who often accrue massive debt to obtain the credentials that foster teaching excellence. Care is interpersonal, but it’s also structural: tempering the weight of bureaucracy; helping us navigate complex systems and processes during times of crisis or change; and ensuring that the work we put into this institution is packaged back to us in the form of real benefits.
Understanding Health Care Access
Health care was a massive priority in the bargaining survey: Access for those who lack it, as well as continuity of quality/institutional contributions for those already insured by one of the School’s plans. We recently sent out a Health Care Survey to get working numbers on how many NTT faculty are currently uninsured or would want to opt in to health care benefits if given the opportunity, especially at the Lecturer rank. With this in mind, we’ve been proposing methods that would secure access to quality health care for as many of us as possible.
We’ve proposed:
Untethering health insurance from the promotion process: Health insurance is NOT a merit-based issue. Faculty should not have to choose between going to the doctor or paying rent. This point of view is supported by Federal law and the Affordable Care Act.
Insuring by numbers: A method that we believe will insure as many people as possible—through a threshold of credit hours taught—while enshrining insurance quality and premium commitments already established in the School’s current benefits plan.
Cost sharing for health insurance: Tethering premiums to those included in the Staff collective bargaining agreement.
Student Debt awareness: Workshops/tutorials for NTT faculty on federal student loan repayment options and programs, including Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).
Implementing an Educational Assistance Program: Under IRS code 127 (renewed through at least 2025), any institution that received CARES Act funding can apply the same maximum benefit to qualifying federal student debt ($5250) as they would to tuition remission. Here, faculty could take advantage of this program in lieu of tuition remission.
Caregiver/Medical/Parental/Bereavement Leave: Allowing all NTT faculty to access these forms of paid leave, under the same conditions as the FT faculty.
Retirement plans: Allowing all NTT faculty to participate in retirement plans, under the same conditions as the FT faculty.
Emeritus status: Enshrining institutional privileges and emeritus titles for our longstanding NTT faculty after retirement.
Our big priorities in this area: Ensuring (insuring!) that as many of our NTT colleagues as possible have access to quality health care, come hell or high water; pragmatic solutions to the student debt crisis and the nebulous bureaucratic paperwork required to manage it; parity with FT fringe benefits.
The “Hill We’ll Die On”: Untethering health insurance from the promotions process, which is truly one of the least equitable and most unconscionable entanglements the School has yet produced.
The admin position
Admin has made a tentative proposal regarding health insurance that is not concrete enough for us to speak to. We can, however, share that it falls short of offering coverage or assistance to enough people. Their proposal does not detail how they might administer and manage it, and was so deeply underfunded as to be offensive, and functionally the status quo. Separating health insurance from the promotions process is simply something that they are unable to grok.
In their counterproposals, they’ve outright ignored any and all articles we proposed related to additional funding for PSLF, emeritus status, or access to essential leaves. Literally—admin won’t even acknowledge that we have proposed such items. In conversation at the table, they did address that applying the game-changing tuition remission benefit to qualifying student loans would be a financial disaster (because people would actually take advantage of it), and that even recertifying PSLF paperwork and sending it alongside our W-2s is an administrative burden too heavy to bear.
PROTECTIONS
Vision: This entire contract is a legal document. Our proposal introduces processes to ensure that parity and stability are more than simply practices and customs; they are the responsibility of management to execute and can be enforced through legal processes.
Understanding Grievances
Undergirding any labor contract (called a Collective Bargaining Agreement, or CBA) is the ability to grieve contract violations through a legally-backed, graduated process. If a NTT faculty member believes that some part of their union contract has been violated—by their chair or by administration—they can file a grievance with the union. We proposed a thoughtful, three-step Grievance Process that provides two opportunities to resolve a grievance internally, ending in a third-party arbitration if a resolution cannot be reached within the first two steps. Grievances are power; but we’ve also included specific resources (called “Union Rights”) that ensure we have investigative and educational powers to defend the contract in practice.
We’ve proposed:
Just Cause: Currently, the administration has the ability to terminate or not reappoint any NTT faculty for any reason (or “just cuz”). We’ve proposed “just cause”—a good and legal reason—for any such acts.
Information Sharing/Labor Management: We’ve proposed that SAIC provide detailed information to our union, including curricular changes, enrollment and course cancellation data, and more, to track and make transparent issues that could affect NTT faculty. This info will be engaged by a newly-formed Labor Management Committee (LMC)—a paid group who will work alongside existing shared governance, in regular communication with management to address topics pertinent to how the CBA is implemented. The LMC will also be tasked with supporting new and existing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging initiatives for NTT faculty.
Academic Freedom: We have a tentative agreement (TA) on an academic freedom proposal, which enshrines protections usually only guaranteed to FT faculty to the NTT bargaining unit.
Title IX: We’ve proposed that faculty who believe they’ve been subjected to workplace discrimination under Title IX be able to appeal if they feel their Title IX investigation was incomplete or inadequate.
Layoff/Recall: Check out the Stability section to read more about layoffs! As for Recall: Any faculty who lose courses due to enrollment issues or curricular changes must be reinstated before hiring new faculty.
Our big priorities in this area: Strong grievance and arbitration (recourse for unjust layoffs), academic freedom, increased transparency.
The “Hill We’ll Die On”: We will ensure that thorough ‘just cause’ is never up for debate and that you’ll be able to grieve violations of this contract. No compromises.
The admin position
Their primary concern voiced at the table is the fear that management will be inundated by grievances. If they are concerned about mismanagement leading to grievances, we say: Train your chairs; require management to actually manage. They’ve “accepted” Just Cause, but have provided numerous counterproposals to various articles that poke holes in this critical protection: Restricting grievances for non-reappointment to those who have taught longer than nine years; insisting they retain the ‘flexibility’ to be able to hire, replace, or reduce NTT faculty members at-will, and more. For weeks, they also fought us tooth-and-nail to ensure that AAUP standards for academic freedom were kept out of our contract. That’s a battle we won.
While it’s not in dispute that NTT Faculty will participate in Senate (and several of its committees), they have also undermined shared governance by proposing to eliminate PT Liaisons, threatening to remove the Lecturer Rep position without notice, and barring our participation in the Fiscal Affairs and Handbook committees. This cuts us out of crucial schoolwide conversations that we deserve to participate in—over issues like the School’s possible divestment from fossil fuels, or extending the vote to NTT faculty over changes in the Handbook—and further passively disenfranchises our members.
PARITY
Vision: Here is where we do things by the numbers. You filled out our NTT Bargaining Survey in Spring 2023 and we heard you loud and clear: More money was at the top of almost everyone’s list. Parity means equal pay for equal work. But taking a page from Pierre Bourdieu, all things can be converted back into economic capital, so conversations about parity also extend to power and value. We used the MLA Recommendation on Minimum Per-Course Compensation for Part-Time Faculty Members as a starting point to negotiate Per Course Rates (PCRs), but we won’t accept anything less than parity. What does that look like? An example: when you take service (which should account for 28 percent of a FT salary) out of the equation, an Associate Professor, Adj. and an Associate Professor (FT) should be earning the same median PCR for the work they do in the classroom. Turns out we’ve been underpaid by at least 15 percent. We’re not going to accept less when we do more.
We’ve proposed:
Increased PCRs: More Monet. At the very least, the work we do teaching, mentoring, and advising our students should be compensated in parity with our FT colleagues. Annual raises should meet or exceed the cost of inflation, and reflect the reality of living and working in Chicago. This is the minimum.
Professional Development: Our practices require real financial support, not the scant remains of departmental funds. (Also: you cannot pay us in pizza.) We’ve proposed a renewable slush fund that offers all NTT faculty a chance to pursue opportunities they need to thrive professionally.
Everyday equity: Includes more reasonable rates for non-teaching work (“the day rate”), substitution pay, and thesis advising.
More opportunities for Paid Leave and Merit Pay: You should not feel better about your odds of winning a small-scale state lottery than you do about receiving a paid leave. Merit pay should be at least worth the effort you put into the application.
Pedagogical support: Fee levels (paid to you) that *disincentivize* last-minute course cancellation, alongside robust funds to update existing courses and develop new ones.
A long-overdue Professor of Practice position: Many NTT faculty—dedicated and experienced educators with compelling practices—function as FT faculty in all but name. Difficulty finding enough faculty to meet the institution’s service needs? FT/NTT ratio out of whack, with no in-between? We’ve got a solution for you.
Our big priorities in this area: Increased compensation, both macro (PCRs, with annual and COLA raises) and micro (non-teaching, advising, and administrative work); funds for our professional and pedagogical practices; restructuring and expanding paid leave; instituting a Professor of Practice position.
The “Hill We’ll Die On”:
Roses are red;
We know what we’re worth.
Admin needs to create equitable and sustainable structures to compensate us for the work we collectively perform for this institution without security, without support, without respect;
Or, in other words: do their research. (We did.)
The admin position:
They responded to our comprehensive economic proposal with a lone counteroffer, and suffice to say, it’s less a position and more an entrenchment of the status quo. Their offer for initial PCR rates has not changed a whit from what they budgeted for two years ago, and the annual increases they tout as “meaningful” do not even meet the current rate of inflation—a technicality that results in you taking a pay cut every year. Their refrain that we are amongst the highest-paid NTT faculty at AICAD schools does nothing to address parity with our FT colleagues for the work we do in our SAIC classrooms, or take comparative stock of recent annual raises received by the upper administration.
Significant articles that we proposed — including those to combat compression and incentivize equity, introduce longevity pay, and establish a long-discussed Professor of Practice position — were outright ignored. They claim, “If we didn’t respond, we’re not interested.” You don’t have to be interested in something to respect it.
Understanding Inflation
As of 10/30, the administration has offered the following PCR raises. (Historically, we’ve received 2 percent as the status quo—and you’ll note they revert to exactly that in 2028.) Don’t let the fact that they failed to commit to any raises during the pandemic make this look better than it is.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure of the average change in prices for market consumer goods paid for by urban consumers. It’s a reliable means to consider the impact of inflation, and it’s calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a federal agency.
Average annual inflation rate (CPI):
2021: 4.7 percent
2022: 9.59 percent
2023: 4.06 percent
2024: 3.4 percent (estimated median)
Admin proposed PCR increase
For Lecturers / For Adjuncts (all ranks):
August 16, 2025: 3.25 % / 3.0 %
August 16, 2026: 3.25 % / 3.0 %
August 16, 2027: 3.0 % / 2.5 %
August 16, 2028: 2.5 % / 2.0 %
