We’re still moving along!

Our most recent bargaining session took place on Monday October 12th, and it was a fruitful session with some progress that we are happy to share.

Before getting into the update, some Bargaining Committee news: SVA faculty Jasper Lin (MFA Computer Arts) and Carson Parish (BFA Photo) accepted nomination and have been elected by acclamation to fill the two vacant positions on the SVAFAC-UAW Bargaining Committee.

On to the update – you can also watch a brief video summary on our Instagram.

We proposed the following counter articles:

• Personnel Records: We approached this article’s revision by re-adding language that would obligate SVA to follow the extent of the law. 
• Sabbaticals: We are finding common ground here, but SVA is looking into the economics to determine how they can continue to offer this benefit and they’re considering adjusting the calculation to the number of courses taught versus years.
• Workspace and Materials: We  had a discussion about how classrooms and facilities directly impact the student learning experience, and we provided examples of why it’s critical faculty have a voice over our work environment. 
• Emeritus Status: In this article, we asserted that SVA provides retiring faculty with 15 years of emeritus status and we re-added museum benefits as part of the privileges of this status. SVA said they may be able to consider different longevity, granted not guaranteed, and will get back to us with a counter.

In addition to the proposals we brought, we received two counters from SVA:

• Job Posting: SVA’s counter rejected our idea of creating a resource for current  faculty members to view available faculty positions and proposed that SVA faculty would self-report their qualifications for courses they might be interested in teaching. Department chairs would be “encouraged” to consider these faculty members. 
• Faculty Rights: We have come closer to an agreement that would create a College-Wide Advisory Faculty Committee, but SVA has continued to strike our Faculty Rights and Administrative Transparency language from this article.

We are still waiting for a response from the SVA administration regarding our compensation proposal, which we gave in July. The SVA administration informed us they are still working on a counterproposal to this article due to “pretty big gaps.”

If you would like to see more details for the articles we are having discussions about, please see our public proposal tracker here! 

Please come join us as an observer during our next bargaining session on Thursday, October 29th at 3:30pm!

Best,

Mike Falk, BFA Fine Arts, VCS
on behalf of the SVA/FAC-UAW Bargaining Committee