RSVP for Zoom Town Hall August 27th, at 6PM

Kick off the fall semester by joining colleagues across departments at an August Virtual Town Hall to hear updates on our campaign, get answers to questions, and discuss winning a strong first contract! RSVP here to receive the zoom link.

New language in SVA faculty contracts

It’s come to our attention that the SVA administration has placed additional language into faculty contracts regarding at-will employment and arbitration procedures to resolve disputes. If you find this troubling, you’re not alone – we believe that SVA must bargain with us before making changes to aspects of our working conditions, including altering any language in our individual contracts, as such actions are a mandatory subject of bargaining under labor law. However, we advise faculty to accept their offer – this will NOT waive any of our rights as union members, as we continue negotiations.

We are disappointed that the SVA administration continues to make changes unilaterally, and so are working to raise this with SVA and are looking into whether to file an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charge around this recent development.

You can also read recent coverage about our ongoing work to address course cancellations in Hyperallergic.

Stay up to date on our campaign – follow us on Instagram

If you haven’t already, please take a moment to follow our campaign (sva.fac.uaw) on Instagram to stay up to date on our progress and upcoming events; and hear from fellow SVA faculty why we want a fair contract.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or thoughts.

Best,

Sean Paul, Art History
On behalf of SVA/FAC-UAW Organizing Committee

At our last session, we proposed the vast majority of our economic bargaining demands, including our call for Course Cancellation Fees to be paid to faculty whose planned courses are cancelled. As we continue to bargain over this and other critical topics related to faculty working conditions, please take a moment to complete our SVA/FAC-UAW Course Cancellation Survey.

Click here to share if any of your AY 26-27 courses have been cancelled

This survey aims to gather information about our experiences as faculty, in particular, whether you’ve had courses cancelled for the Fall 2026 or Spring 2027 term. Your input will help us address these issues more effectively in bargaining as we prepare for the upcoming academic year.

RSVP for SVA Faculty Union Town Hall 8/27 on Zoom

Save the date and RSVP for a virtual SVA Faculty Union Town Hall on Thursday, August 27th. Join colleagues to hear updates on our campaign, meet fellow SVA faculty, and organize together to strengthen our fight to win our first contract.

You can follow our most recent progress at the bargaining table here.

UAW Webinar on F-1/J-1 Visa Policy Changes
Today (Thursday), August 13th at 3pm, the UAW Higher Education Department is hosting a webinar to discuss how workers on an international visa can navigate the new F-1/J-1 policy, and how to continue organizing against attacks on the international community. RSVP here to receive the link.

Best,

Stephanie Stavropoulos, MFA Design for Social Innovation
On behalf of SVA/FAC-UAW Bargaining Committee

Click here to share a brief testimonial on how fair compensation would support the critical work we perform at SVA!

We’re excited to share that we began discussing economic proposals at Monday’s bargaining session! We kicked things off by proposing a large number of articles. Given the scope of the discussion, you can find a brief summary of each below: 

• Professional Development Fund: This article would establish a fund for Faculty to apply and be reimbursed for professional development opportunities. Like unionized Faculty in NYC who have won similar PD funds in their contracts, this would expand resources for professional development and help us continue to excel in our work with students.
• Intellectual Property: This proposal would enshrine the current SVA Intellectual Property Policy and strengthen Faculty intellectual property rights over our work and art. 
• Jury Duty: This proposal would ensure Faculty would not have any reduction in pay or benefits due to jury duty service.
• Tuition Benefits: This proposal would enshrine tuition benefits for Faculty who wish to take SVA courses.
• Health Insurance Benefits: One of the highest priorities expressed by colleagues across SVA is increased access to healthcare coverage. Currently, benefits are prohibitively expensive and in some cases, our wages are barely enough to cover the health insurance premiums. Ensuring access to affordable healthcare is critical for helping sustain quality teaching at the school.
• Union Leave & Office: This proposes that faculty can receive compensation for our role in assisting with necessary union operational duties. including helping to enforce our future contract. This article also establishes leave-time for Faculty to participate in union activities or opportunities.
• Family Care: This establishes a Family Care Fund to assist faculty caregivers and parents with costs related to child and dependent care.
• Transit & Museum Benefits: These contractualize existing benefits related to transit and museum access.
• Technology: This article responds to feedback from unit surveys regarding situations in which Faculty require technology or equipment to 1) perform their teaching duties or 2) meet industry software standards, but do not have access to the necessary resources. This ensures that the school, not our pocketbooks, helps provide what we need to teach our students.
• Leaves: This codifies benefits provided by law or school policy, and would enhance the current policy in several places. 
• Maintenance of Benefits: This asserts the status of any benefits applicable to current faculty in the unit and ensures the status quo for those unaddressed in our forthcoming contract.
• Pay Day: This adjusts and makes the current asymmetrical payroll schedule more consistent with the academic calendar.
• Workspace and Materials: This article ensures SVA will provide all materials, equipment, facilities, and software required to effectively teach a course at no cost to the Faculty Member.
• Retirement: This establishes meaningful competitive retirement benefits for faculty and brings faculty to standards at peer institutions such as Parsons and NYU, especially keeping in mind that Faculty have lost the retirement benefit matching in the past.
• Sabbaticals: This codifies and improves sabbatical leave policy, one of our most cherished benefits. SVA proudly employs instructors who are experts in creative fields and have illustrious careers. A sabbatical leave gives creatives time to dive into long-term projects and provides the mental space we need to pursue different ideas and sharpen our skills, both of which would enhance our teaching skills and improve SVA’s reputation as a leading art institution.

Compensation
Our overall goal is to establish fair compensation for Faculty that reflects the value of our work and the cost of living in New York. Faculty deserve compensation that allows us to live and thrive in NYC, the arts capital of the world. Fair compensation is a vital contributor to Faculty retention and morale, and will allow us to focus on SVA’s mission of supporting our students. Read more on why a majority of all SVA faculty have called on the administration to address these principles in our first contract.

• Establish minimums to address current rates that lag behind local institutions such as CUNY, NYU, Fordham, and others. 
• Guarantee annual increases that keep pace with the high cost of living in NYC.
• Codify longevity increases that honor commitment to the School and mitigate gender and racial inequities in pay over time.  
• Establish compensation for additional duties outside the classroom.

Our initial proposal was further guided by the rising yearly cost of living in the New York area, an absence of meaningful annual pay raises in recent years (sometimes as low as 0%), and disproportionately low average hourly rates for faculty compared to other schools. You can read our comprehensive initial compensation proposal here.

Finally, we re-asserted our proposal on Welcome Materials and Orientation, and followed up with the SVA administration on our Grievance and Arbitration proposal. They responded that we were very close to an agreement and could expect a counterproposal in the near future. You can follow along on the progress of all proposals here. 

Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or thoughts, or to get more involved in our fight for a fair contract. 

Best, 

Billy Altman, Humanities & Sciences
On behalf of SVA/FAC-UAW Bargaining Committee

Big news! As we prepare to bargain over economic topics (e.g pay, benefits, and other important economic priorities), a majority of SVA faculty have signed onto our petition urging the school to work with us towards a fair contract that adequately supports our teaching. You can read the full petition here.

Now more than ever, it’s critical faculty and the SVA community join together around our shared goal of sustaining our school, our students, and that we build towards a contract that reflects the value of our teaching and the work we do in the arts in New York City. If you have not signed the petition, you may still do so.

RSVP to our next session on Monday, July 20th!
On Monday, we will present our initial economic proposals to the SVA administration and begin discussing compensation, healthcare, and other key benefits - RSVP to join the in-person session as an observer here. If you cannot attend, we’ll send out an update after the session, and you are welcome to follow the proposed articles on our online bargaining tracker.

Update from Bargaining Session #13

Last week, we held our thirteenth bargaining session with the SVA administration. We reached a tentative agreement on our VCAP article (Voluntary Community Action Program), which would allow faculty to voluntarily designate a portion of their dues to pro-labor political action efforts that our larger union supports. As many faculty have expressed, establishing a stronger collective political voice is very important in these times. We are also extremely close on a TA with Grievance and Arbitration, which would allow faculty to bring grievances to a neutral arbitrator. We expect to be able to agree on this very soon.

We also discussed the importance of an Employment Records article. This would ensure a contractual right for faculty to access full employment records and ensure that any record is accurate. We are also discussing receiving key demographic data on our unit as a whole from the SVA administration to help support our set of economic proposals that we are prepared to present at Monday’s session.

Feel free to respond with any questions or thoughts. You can watch our recent bargaining recap on our Instagram.

Best,

Merlin Ural Rivera, Humanities & Sciences
On behalf of SVA/FAC-UAW Bargaining Committee

At our twelfth bargaining session, we are happy to share we reached tentative agreements on three more articles with the SVA administration: Health and Safety, Academic Freedom, and Union Management Committee. We are also extremely close to being in agreement on two other articles, Grievance and Arbitration, and Bargaining Unit Information. You can watch bargaining committee member Justin Elm (Art History, VCS, Honors) recap our recent progress here.  

Our Academic Freedom article most importantly ensures faculty have the right to speak freely outside classroom and inside the classroom, without fear of retaliation or reprisal. Similarly, our Health and Safety article establishes a contractual obligation for the SVA administration to maintain a safe and healthy work environment, including adequate heating and cooling, which has been an issue for many faculty, and necessary materials to teach in a safe manner. It also establishes adequate measures to protect faculty working in hazardous environments, such as proper ventilation, and other precautions.

We’re looking forward to future bargaining sessions as we move into the very important stage of negotiating economic articles of this first contract – this will include proposals on pay, benefits, professional development, and others. You can read the full status of all articles we have proposed on our website.

Take a moment to add your name to our petition – the more faculty who sign, the more leverage we have as we prepare to negotiate over compensation and other critical topics:

Add your name to ask SVA administration to recognize the value of our teaching contribution and reach a strong contract!

Other updates:

• USC part-time and full-time faculty vote to unionize: non-tenure track faculty at University of Southern California with United Faculty-UAW won their union by an overwhelming 70% ‘yes’ vote – we’re excited to be part of a growing national movement!
• Congressional Subcommittee approves budget proposal that would defund major arts education grant: The proposal would eliminate the only remaining Department of Education (DE) arts grant program. If you or your work might be impacted by this change, please reply directly to this email to discuss more.
  
• NYC Democratic primary GOTV canvass and phonebank opportunities with UAW Region 9A-endorsed candidates: UAW Region 9A, the geographic region representing over 30,000 workers across NYC, New England, and Puerto Rico that our union is part of, has endorsed five UAW members running for elected office. These candidates can be strong allies in our efforts to improve our working conditions and fight for pro-worker, pro-education policies more broadly. You can read more about the candidates here, and RSVP to help canvas, make calls, or participate in election day poll-visibility today (6/22) and tomorrow (6/23). 

Best,

Joan Hilty, BFA Comics
on behalf of SVA/FAC-UAW Bargaining Committee

Earlier this week, we had our eleventh bargaining session with the SVA administration. Watch Stephanie Stavropoulos (MFA Design for Social Innovation) and Valerie Eads (Humanities & Sciences) walk through a full recap of the session!

We brought three counterproposals on Grievance and Arbitration, Faculty Rights, and Job Posting. We are happy to report that the administration indicated they were on board with the idea of a Faculty Advisory Committee that would support more robust faculty participation in school decisions. However, SVA continues to be hesitant to commit to transparency with faculty especially around topics such as financial status, budget, and facilities.

In regard to Job Posting, we are currently pushing for SVA to develop an internal job posting mechanism that would allow current faculty the opportunity to apply to teach available classes prior to Chairs seeking external applicants.

We are happy to report we had a productive discussion about our Academic Freedom article and are extremely close to an agreement on this article. This article would make sure faculty have the right to express themselves and teach freely without fear of retaliation or retribution of any kind from the School. We also are close to reaching an agreement on Union Management Committee.

Next, we discussed a matter of demographic data. We believe it's important for SVA to provide this information to help inform our future proposals on compensation. The administration has not provided us this data, but based on our conversation, it seems possible they would reconsider. We are still waiting on counters from the SVA administration on Health and Safety and Bargaining Unit Information and hope to receive them at our next session on Tuesday, June 16th.

Need Help?
While we continue to bargain and organize, SVA faculty colleagues should know that since our union is certified, there are certain rights we can already exercise ahead of our first contract. For instance, if you are requested to attend a meeting that could result in discipline or dismissal, it is your right to have representation at that meeting . If you are facing any potential issues, please email [svafacultyunited.uaw@gmail.com] to get in touch.

SVA Faculty Zoom Drop-in Hours
This summer, we will be hosting a series of zoom sessions for faculty to drop-in to ask questions, or discuss any recent developments or updates at the School. Please keep an eye out for the first such date.

Best,

Stephanie Stavropoulos, MFA Design for Social Innovation
On behalf of SVA/FAC-UAW Bargaining Committee

Happy end of semester!

On Tuesday we wrapped up a very productive tenth bargaining session with the SVA administration. We made meaningful progress by coming to an agreement on a couple of articles. Here are a few highlights below:

• Generative AI: Thanks to all our faculty organizing, we were able to agree to a precedent-setting article on Artificial Intelligence that states clearly that SVA will not use AI to teach courses.This underlines our commitment to human instruction in the classroom and creates an enforceable standard for all unionized faculty nationally. You can read our AI Tentative Agreement here.

• Bulletins and Postings: This allows our faculty union to put up posters around campus to spread information.

SVA gave us a handful of counters, including Grievance and Arbitration, Job Posting, Faculty Rights, and Academic Freedom (we are a “word” away from agreeing on this!).

We brought a counter for our Bargaining Unit Information article. While getting closer, we were dismayed by our discussion with SVA’s bargaining team regarding reviewing faculty demographic information to ensure equity and inclusion across our workplace. We are hoping to continue discussing this one and hoping SVA will bridge our differences.

We have gotten this far thanks to organizing and faculty participation, so let’s keep it up! Please join our next session as an observer on May 26th, 3-5pm.

Best,
Mike Falk, Fine Arts, VCS
On behalf of SVA/FAC-UAW Bargaining Committee

Joanne Seador (BFA Photo) and Edwin Rivera-Arias (Humanities & Sciences) give a recap of our recent session.

Earlier this week, we completed our ninth bargaining session with the SVA administration. Due to difficulties scheduling a time that worked for the administration, this was our first session for over a month.

We pressed the SVA administration to respond to a handful of articles they have not responded to for a significant amount of time, including Employment Records, Faculty Appointments, Faculty Rights, Job Posting, and Health and Safety; these address core priorities and must be treated as such.  The SVA administration gave us a few counters on Generative AI, Union Management Committee, Union Security, and Bargaining Unit Information.

While we were unable to come to any tentative agreements, we moved much closer on UMC and Generative AI, and expect to be able to reach an agreement on those in the near future.  Generative AI is a significant topic of conversation at SVA right now and we will ensure it’s addressed in our contract. We also gave SVA counterproposals on Academic Freedom and Grievance and Arbitration.

We are disappointed that the administration has continued to reject a few important elements of our Bargaining Unit Information and Unit Security proposals, including providing welcome materials, and union security clause. These articles currently exist at NYU and The New School, among other unionized faculty contracts, and would ensure that all faculty receive the necessary materials from our union.

If you’re interested in reading more, please check out our proposal tracker on our website — and while you’re there, please sign our petition calling on the administration to bargain more speedily and constructively. Additionally, you can watch our update on Instagram — and join us May 5th from 4-6pm for our next bargaining session:

Click here to watch the video update.

“I’d recommend everyone to be an observer. At the end of the day, ultimately, faculty, the administration, we’re all on the same page wanting to make the school better for faculty and students, and make it thrive.” — George Boorujy, BFA Fine Arts

Best,

Joan Hilty, BFA Comics
On behalf of SVA/FAC-UAW Bargaining Committee

P.S. Thank you to all the students, staff, and faculty who stopped by our table during May Day to discuss our campaign, and the ways we can strengthen our collective voice at SVA and in the arts!

RSVP for our next bargaining sessions on April 29th and May 5th!

Hello,

As we wrap up the Spring semester, there are two additional opportunities to join a bargaining session as a faculty observer, and help win a first contract. Sign up here to attend next Wednesday, 4/29,  from 4-6PM; and Tuesday, May 5th, 3-6PM. The more of us who participate, the more effectively we can negotiate stronger protections and improvements at this crucial time. Remember, our benefits and raises are still suspended, and one way to raise your voice against this is by signing this petition.

You can find a full summary of our current progress online on our website, and our bargaining tracker. Our presence as observers reminds the SVA administration that there are hundreds of faculty determined to improve our working conditions and our students’ learning conditions.

Past and Upcoming Events

• April Faculty Town Hall: SVA faculty met up in person earlier this month to discuss progress on our campaign, next steps, and learn about recent victories with our UAW colleagues at NYU who recently won a first contract.

• Join us to stand for faculty rights this May Day: Join us to head down to the New School at 3pm and support part-time faculty organizing against program cuts. We will also meet up with a larger contingent of NYC union members at Washington Square at 4pm.
• Submit a Testimonial: Why do you support a strong first contract? Reply with a photo and a couple sentences about what matters most to you as a faculty member at SVA.  

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or respond to this email and we can connect you with a colleague in your department.

Best,

Merlin Ural Rivera, Humanities & Sciences

On behalf of SVA/FAC-UAW Bargaining Committee

We are excited to announce that we reached two more tentative agreements with SVA at our Tuesday session. Our tentative agreement (TA) on Discipline and Discharge would give faculty protections and recourse against unjust termination. Additionally, we reached an agreement on our Meeting Space article, which will facilitate our ability to reserve space for future union-related meetings and gatherings on campus. Watch Bargaining Committee member and SVA faculty in Comics Joan Hilty summarize our progress.

In addition, the administration brought counterproposals on Union Management Committee (UMC) and Bargaining Unit Info. Unfortunately, SVA is still asserting they will not share information related to faculty gender, race, and other critical demographics in our bargaining unit that would help us most effectively advocate for stronger rights, equity and inclusion as faculty. We are continuing to review these counterproposals.

Thanks to the testimony of several faculty last week on their experience with harassment, bullying, and discrimination, and the importance of stronger protections against this behavior, we made significant progress on Prohibition Against Discrimination and Harassment. In response to these testimonies – which highlighted the importance of a fair, neutral process to address these workplace issues – the administration presented a counterproposal Tuesday that agreed faculty should have the right to address these issues through our union contract’s grievance procedure.

While we are continuing to review the rest of the counterproposal, this progress demonstrates that when we participate and share our experiences, faculty have more leverage in our negotiations to win improvements.

Finally, we are still awaiting counterproposals on two important topics, Faculty Rights, and Reappointment and Appointment. RSVP here to join us as an observer at our upcoming sessions: March 13th from 10-1PM, and March 23rd from 3:15-6PM. The more of us who attend, the stronger message we send to the SVA administration.

In solidarity,

Edwin Rivera-Arias, Humanities & Sciences
On behalf of SVAFAC-UAW Bargaining Committee