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UC-AFT Faculty Bargaining Update #2 UC Riverside June 4

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Members Show Management What We’re Fighting for!

Our single greatest resource in this contract campaign is the voices of our members -- and we saw that powerfully during bargaining at UC Riverside.

In addition to our bargaining team and member-observers from Riverside and UCLA, we were joined virtually by UC-AFT faculty from Berkeley and Santa Cruz who weighed in on the issue of Principal Investigator status in a series of short video testimonials. These short videos illustrated how Management’s reluctance to grant Principal Investigator status to lecturers is an impediment to the very teaching we are hired to do. Watch the presentation here: https://bit.ly/2I1HpAQ

Riverside faculty member Cori Knight led management on an eye-opening tour of a campus building from the perspective of a mobility-impaired lecturer. She led the group down a labyrinth of halls, demonstrating broken electronic door-open buttons and doors that don’t accommodate wheelchairs or crutches. This tour challenged Management to see the day-to-day realities many lecturers know all too well...#ucforthemany requires that UC be accessible for every body.

The chorus of member voices in the video testimonials made a strong and unified demand for PI status. If you’ve experienced difficulties relating to appointment, reappointment, or paid or unpaid leave, and would like to share your story in a short video, contact your local CCC.

UC-AFT Fights for Instructional Resources!

Across the UCs, UC-AFT members are being crowded 7 or 8 to an office, denied timely access to the email accounts and library privileges they need to plan classes, and blocked from applying for grants and awards. The UC-AFT bargaining team passed our initial proposal for Article 8--Instructional Support, to demand the resources that lecturers need in order to support students.

We need offices where we can comfortably meet with students and have confidential conversations. We shouldn’t have to pay out of pocket for course texts and technology we need in order to teach. We and our students deserve to have a safe and clean classroom. The UCOP lead negotiator told us our demands were “a long shot,” but we’re committed to reasonable and sensible standards.

Management Wants Us to Forfeit Professional Development Funding and Weaken Protections Against Sexual Harassment and Violence

UCOP presented proposals that undermine our Professional Development Fund and limit the rights of UC-AFT faculty who have experienced sexual harassment.

They want to zero out our Professional Development Funding at the end of every year instead of rolling it over to the next funding cycle. However, they didn’t know which campuses typically have funds remaining at the end of the year or how much surplus funding rolls over now. Several management executives assured us that their campuses receive more applications than they can fund. We asked why they want UC-AFT faculty to attend fewer conferences, develop fewer new courses, and write fewer books and articles. In response request for a rationale behind their proposal, they said “You can dig and dig and dig” for a reason, while they refused to provide even one that made sense. We’re left to conclude that their proposal is simply a power grab instead of an attempt to solve a real problem.

Sexual violence and harassment at the UC is a real problem. Last year, a state auditor found that UC management takes too long to discipline tenure-track faculty who are sexual harassers and imposes that discipline inconsistently. The state auditor concluded that UC admin “must do more to stop, prevent, and remedy sexual harassment at its campuses.” While we welcome management’s goal of applying sexual harassment and sexual violence policies more consistently, it can’t be at the expense of weakening the protections contained in our current contract.

That’s what their proposal does: makes it harder to demonstrate that a hostile work environment exists, lets investigations go on longer, deprives us of the right to a union representative during proceedings, and cuts our grievance process short. Management wants to put more burdens on vulnerable UC-AFT members and limit our avenues for pursuing justice. In a university system that permits pervasive sexual harassment and shrugs off assault, the only thing that’s consistent is Title IX offices that consistently ignore complaints from the students, faculty, and staff they’re supposed to protect. But we will fight for safe working and learning environments and multiple routes to justice when admin closes ranks to protect itself.

The next bargaining session will take place on June 19 at Berkeley.

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