Despite winning increased job security in our 2021 contract campaign, lecturers at UC Merced are still fighting to prevent layoffs owed to their campus’ budget deficits. As lecturer Caleb Westby described, their plight is a reminder that “… no matter how much loyalty or work or effort you give to an institution, that institution doesn’t […]
When teachers at the UCLA Lab School went on strike in 2023, their students showed strong support. As 9-year-old Ayla told a reporter from the LA Times, “They make learning fun and it’s always exciting, because before I came, I didn’t like all the subjects. Now I love them,” she said. “They’re striking today because […]
Written at the height of our 2019-2021 contract fight, UCI Lecturer Diane Mendoza Nevárez described the plight of lecturers in intimate detail: “… what message does UC send when lecturers — who are much more likely than tenure-track faculty to be women, and more likely to be BIPOC — are seemingly regarded as disposable? When […]
The UC workforce has a churn problem as about a quarter of the system’s 6,000 lecturers don’t return annually. The lecturer union and UC have made some progress in their multi-year impasse over a new contract, but many issues remain unsolved as the threat of strikes loom. Read more at CalMatters […]
In this 2021 article, Table Team member Kat Lewin laid out the stakes of the Unit 18 contract campaign: “I think UCI in particular really prides itself on a reputation of a school that serves a lot of first-generation and low-income college students…The studies have shown again and again there is a direct correlation between […]
Reporter Mikhail Zinshteyn’s deep dive into the problem of teaching faculty churn for Cal Matters marked a huge turning point in our 2019-2021 contract campaign. His article featured data analysis and personal profiles that elevated the issues we’d been raising at the bargaining table. Read it at Cal Matters […]
In this 2018 article for Academe Magazine, Hank Reichman profiled UC-AFT librarians’ fight for Academic Freedom, arguing that “the erosion of academic freedom is a danger to our educational system.” By the end of the contract campaign, librarians had pushed the UC to adopt a new policy protecting not only our members academic freedom rights, […]
Read More… from “UC Librarians Fight for Academic Freedom, Pay Equity,” Academe Magazine (2018)
In his 2018 Opinion essay for the UCSD Guardian about UC Librarian’s Contract campaign, Christopher Robertson wrote, “Few will leave UC San Diego without taking advantage of its library resources at some point in their studies here, be it for a student’s report or a professor’s research. Geisel Library’s 7 million texts and innumerable digitized […]
Coverage of the National Adjunct Walkout Day in 2015 included an action at UCSC, where UC-AFT members marched across campus with a large puppet called “Saint Precariat” to call for better job security for teaching faculty. Read more about the day of action at Inside Higher Ed […]
Describing what was at stake in UC-AFT’s librarians contract negotations in 2011, Pres. Mike Rotkin said, “We have estimated that 40 percent of the librarians hired over the past 10 years have now left UC for positions elsewhere. That is a huge turnover rate and it leaves the remaining UC librarians with workload problems since […]
Read More… from “Final agreement reached between librarians’ union and UC,” Daily Aggie (2011)
