CHICAGO — Nontenure track faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago are moving to organize with the Art Institute of Chicago Workers United, the union representing staff at both the Michigan Avenue museum and its school.
At a rally on the Art Institute steps Tuesday afternoon, faculty called on their colleagues to join them in signing union authorization cards, the first step toward filing for union representation.
“United we bargain,” they chanted. “Divided we beg.”
In an open letter Tuesday announcing their intent to unionize, almost 200 adjunct professors and lecturers at the school called their working conditions “intolerable” and protested a two-tier system of compensation and benefits they said created a “permanent underclass of contingent faculty.”
“I love my job so much,” said Sid Branca, an assistant professor adjunct in the school’s department of film, video, new media and animation, during Tuesday’s rally. “And I continue to do it without the appropriate resources because I think it matters.”
“The current situation is completely unsustainable,” said Branca, who has signed a card in favor of joining the union. “The faculty are exploited and they’re burnt out. And we are still doing our best because we care. But it does not have to be like this.”
“We are out here because we believe in the value of arts education. We take our roles as educators as seriously as we take our lives,” said Kristi McGuire, who has taught at the school since 2007.
In January, Art Institute workers voted 142 to 44 to form Art Institute of Chicago Workers United, the first major museum union in the city. School of the Art Institute of Chicago staff voted 115 to 48 in favor of the union in a separate vote.
If a majority of about 600 nontenure track faculty win a vote to join the union, they will more than double its current membership. The union now represents about 500 workers including curators, retail employees, custodians and librarians at the museum and academic advisers, administrative assistants and mailroom workers at the school.
The faculty would form the union’s third bargaining unit, separate from existing bargaining units for museum and school staff. Once they collect enough cards showing support for a union, they can ask the school for voluntary recognition or move for a formal vote before the National Labor Relations Board.
The union did not share the number of nontenured faculty who had signed union cards as of Tuesday.
According to the letter released Tuesday, nontenure track faculty make up more than three quarters of the school’s teaching staff but are not afforded comparable compensation or benefits despite carrying similar workloads to tenured professors.
Lecturers and adjuncts at the school are paid on a per-course basis, with lecturers making $5,769 per three-credit-hour course and adjunct professors making between $6,800 to $8,769 per course this school year, according to Anders Lindall, spokesperson for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, the union representing museum and school workers.
Lindall cited a 2021 compensation recommendation from the Modern Language Association, a professional association for scholars of language and literature, that recommended minimum compensation of at least $11,500 for a three-credit-hour semester course.
Lecturers at the school do not receive health insurance. On Tuesday, faculty raised concerns about lecturers being excluded from promotions within the school and, therefore, benefits.
Danny Floyd, a lecturer in the visual and critical studies program, has taught at the school for eight years. “There’s no upward mobility, and no chance of getting health insurance,” Floyd said.
He said during the COVID-19 pandemic, contracts for part-time faculty have been “gutted.” Part-time contracts previously guaranteed faculty a certain number of courses per year depending on rank, he said, but those guarantees were taken away.
Bree Witt, director of communications for the school, confirmed the school had paused promotions from lecturer to adjunct this academic year due to the “significant financial impact of the pandemic” but said they were expected to resume next academic year, which begins in July.
Witt also confirmed part-time faculty were guaranteed only one course last year, citing a drop in enrollment. Witt said “many” faculty continued to teach their regular course loads despite the reduction in guaranteed courses.
“We have been talking with elected representatives of part-time faculty to come to agreement on how we can restore the course guarantees to as many faculty as possible with our still-lower number of available courses,” Witt said.
In an email sent to part-time faculty Tuesday, school President Elissa Tenny and provost Martin Berger said they did “not believe that unionization is in the best interests of faculty or the school.”
“This is a choice part-time faculty will make individually and collectively,” the email read. “If a union is voted in, we look forward to working with the bargaining team on employment matters.”
Art Institute of Chicago Workers United is part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents public service workers nationwide. The union represents museum and library workers across the country, including at the Chicago Public Library.
Bargaining units for the school support staff and museum workers met with museum management for their first bargaining session last week, according to Lindall.
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