Dear Colleague Letter

Dear Colleagues, 

For many years, we, the non-tenured faculty of MICA, have expressed our dissatisfaction with our working conditions and our lack of decision-making power at MICA. Our frustration with our inability to have a say in our students’ learning conditions, which are our working conditions, led us to send a Letter of No Confidence to the MICA President, Provost, and Board of Trustees last September.

It was a bold choice made through collective discussion, but the answer to that has been more committee work, a request for more time by the administration and the usual rhetoric.

We are essential to the fundamental mission of the college, without us there is no MICA. Despite this and despite increasing workloads, we have seen and felt a steady erosion of our job security. Increasing workloads without fair compensation has become familiar to many faculty. There are no clear or enforceable policies around the conditions of our employment. This past year, we were asked to reduce our salaries in a time-compressed manner without complete information and out of compliance with handbook procedures.

This is why full-time faculty at MICA are coming together to unionize with SEIU Local 500—because we want to make permanent, enforceable changes to the way we are treated at MICA. By unionizing we can unite together and make sure our voices are heard. It is the only means by which we can ensure that we have a legally-protected say in our working conditions at MICA. 

Join us by signing a confidential union card today. We are stronger together! 

We deserve studio and classroom safety, and due process through an enforceable mechanism for grievances. We also want the right to negotiate stronger benefits including retirement, sabbatical leave, healthcare, and retirement matching, and increased support for research and creative work. Coming together as a union with SEIU Local 500 would also allow us to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion as equal decision-making partners with the administration.

Over the past few years, we have observed many non-tenured faculties across the country seizing the opportunity to gain an actual say in their working conditions through unionization. Non-tenured faculty who formed unions across the country recently, such as faculty at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Otis, CCA, University of Chicago, Wells College, Lesley University/LUCAD, Bentley, Tufts University, and Northeastern University have secured longer appointments, due process, enforceable procedures for promotions, better pay, and have addressed many other concerns.

A union contract is the only means by which employees can create a set of legally binding rules and processes around their terms and conditions of employment. In organizing our union with SEIU Local 500, we join full-time faculty, adjunct faculty and graduate student workers at 10 institutions in our region alone, including our own adjuncts who unionized with SEIU Local 500 in 2013. Through their union contract, MICA adjuncts have achieved increased job security, an improved evaluations system, pay increases and additional salary steps which have been legally protected over this critical year. 

Join us by signing a confidential union card today. We are stronger together! 

By coming together as a union with SEIU Local 500, we make a commitment to our collective well-being by ensuring that our voices have weight, that our concerns are taken seriously and that our solutions to those concerns are implemented. 

We have an opportunity now to make MICA the nurturing and supportive workplace we know it can be. Join us by signing this letter.

In Solidarity,

Cindy Cheng (Drawing), Fletcher Mackey (First Year), Lauren Adams (Painting), David Cloutier (FYE and Drawing), Leslie Speer (Product Design), Nate Larson (Photography), Isaac Gertman (Graphic Design), Stephanie Williams (Animation), Kristian Bjornard (Graphic Design), Whitney Sherman (MFA Illustration Practice), Mark Augustine (First Year Experience), Matteo Uguzzoni (Interactive Arts), Alan Orr (Humanistic Studies), Fabienne Lasserre (MFA in Studio Arts), Esther Sheppard (Graphic Design), Jason Sloan (Interactive Arts/Sound Art), Joan Waltemath (L. E. Hoffberger School of Painting), Mina Cheon (First Year Experience), Jason Gottlieb (Graphic Design), James Rouvelle (IA/GMD), Lili Maya (Graphic Design), John Peacock (Rinehart and Humanistic Studies), Jann Rosen-Queralt (Rinehart School of Sculpture), Rebecca Green (First Year Experience), Elaine Lopez (Graphic Design), Yann Seznec (Game Design), Mikita Brottman (Humanistic Studies), Andrea Evans (Drawing); Jason Corace (Game Design), Sangram Majumdar (Painting), Kristine Woods (Fiber), Kenneth Krafchek (MFA in Community Arts), John Penny (MFA in Studio Arts), Nadia Hironaka (Film & Video), Sam Sheffield (Game Design), Erinn Hagerty (Animation), Paula Phillips (Graduate Studies), Rex Stevens (General Fine Arts), Sarah-Neel Smith (Art History), Steve Meneely (Animation), Andrew Keiper (Animation), Stephen Hendee (First Year Experience), Benjamin Luzzatto (Interdisciplinary Sculpture), Thomas Gardner (Social Design), Piper Shepard (Fiber), Renée Rendine (General Fine Arts), Christina Day (Fiber), Donna Basik (MA in Teaching), Kimberly Hall (MFA Illustration Practice), Timmy Aziz (Architectural Design), Frank Fantauzzi (Architectural Design), Jennifer Hock (Art History), Katie O’Meara (Architectural Design),Tony Shore (Painting), Laurence Arcadias (Animation), Allen Moore (Film & Video), Catherine Behrent (First Year Experience), Jay Gould (Photography), Susie Brandt (Fiber/First Year Experience), Jennifer Cole Phillips (Graphic Design MFA), Paul Jaskunas (Humanistic Studies), Saul Myers (Humanistic Studies), Erin Johnson (Film & Video)