2021-2026 Teaching Faculty Contract Summary

What We Won

Job Stability

Our new agreement completely transforms what it means to be a lecturer at the UC. We have created opportunities for professional advancement at every stage of our careers. The new protections in Article 7A include:

• Multi-year appointments in the first six years of teaching, starting with a 1-year appointment, followed by a 2-year appointment, then 3-year appointments until the Excellence Review.
• Performance assessments/reviews and merit pay increases of at least 3% with every reappointment.
• Rehiring rights: the right to be reappointed if deemed "effective" before external candidates are considered.
• One term of service credit for pre-six summer sessions teaching when a lecturer accrues only one or two quarters or one semester of service credit in the prior academic year.
• A clear pathway for promotion to Senior Continuing Lecturer, which comes with a minimum 9% merit raise.
• The new provisions will take effect beginning July 1, 2022 and all pre-continuing faculty teaching in AY 2021 will have preferential rehire for AY 2022-23 courses that will be offered and the instructor is qualified to teach.

Workload

We achieved our goals of greater consistency, transparency, and enforceability of workload issues:

• Improved dispute resolution with the ability to submit a workload dispute to a panel of academic evaluators.
• Increased transparency with workload policies to be posted in all departments.
• Expanded the number of activities eligible for workload equivalencies
• Higher-than-normal workload valuations for classes with more than 200 students or significant feedback on student writing.
• Additional workload involved in teaching online classes (i.e., courses that are approved for online delivery, not emergency remote instruction) will be incorporated into workload valuations for those courses

Compensation

We raised the salary floor and won improved compensation for all lecturers, as well as annual cost-of-living adjustments for each year of the contract:

• Average of 30% increases across the life of the contract.
• $1500 bonus for every member upon ratification.
• 9.5% raises for our lowest paid members 60 days after ratification.
• Cost of living wage increases on the following schedule:
  • Effective February 1, 2022 (to be received in the March 1 paycheck): 7%
  • July 1, 2022: 3%
  • July 1, 2023: 3%
  • July 1, 2024: 3%
  • July 1, 2025: 4%

Leaves of Absence

• Fully paid Pregnancy Disability Leave has been expanded from 6 weeks to 8 weeks
• Paid Medical Leave is now available to lecturers with 66% appointments and above (previously restricted to 100% full-time lecturers).
• All lecturers (both biological and adoptive mothers and fathers) will now be eligible for 4 weeks of fully paid leave to bond with a new child or care for ailing family members. This is in addition to the fully paid pregnancy disability leave that UC-AFT previously won for birth mothers and that, in the new contract, we expanded from 6 to 8 weeks.

Additional Gains

• Increases Professional Development Fund Pool by 25% to $250 per Full-Time Equivalent employee in the bargaining unit annually.
• Ensures that anyone who received PDF grants in 2019-2020 and was unable to use them in 2020-2021 will be able to keep the funding and use it this year without re-applying for the award.
• Introduces a new right to healthy and safe work sites, meaning Unit 18 faculty cannot be required to be physically present on campus during a declared emergency, protecting our ability to get resolution to health and safety issues that endure beyond the end of a particular emergency, and authorizing paid administrative leave under some emergency circumstances.
• Clarifies that any reductions to an appointment after an appointment letter has been issued must be treated as a formal Layoff/Reduction in Time, with all the attendant layoff protections.
• Introduces new chart of Layoff/Reduction in Time rights for easier administration.
• Guarantees appropriate, secure space for storing files, books, student work, and personal effects.
• Guarantees access to printers and shredders (or other confidential document disposal).
• Prohibits copy rooms and computer labs from being used as assigned office space.
• Improves the Reasonable Accommodations process by ensuring that a Unit 18 faculty member may request disability accommodations informally/orally, their preferences for specific accommodations will be taken into account, there will be a paper trail of any assignment changes, and the process will resume if the initial accommodations are inadequate.
• Ensures that Unit 18 faculty being reassigned to a different department will receive appropriate notice and an opportunity to discuss the reassignment.
• Recognizes K-12 Instructors at the UCLA Lab School, Geffen Academy, and Preuss School as members of our bargaining unit.
• Retains full academic freedom and intellectual property rights on par with tenure-track UC faculty.
• Adds ethnicity and immigration status to list of attributes protected from discrimination. Adds definition of sexual harassment. Protects our right to address harassment through both the grievance process (with union representation and support) and/or other venues for redress.
• Protects Pre-Six Lecturer summer unemployment eligibility by clarifying that summer paychecks for appointments that begin in fall are prepayment for academic year work, not summer wages.
• Guarantees that Continuing Lecturers will be included on departmental websites and physical signage.
• Dramatically improves Medical Separation process to be more appropriate for academic appointees whose employment is being terminated by UC admin for medical reasons (whereas previously it was a staff process).
• Commits UC admin to holding new employee orientations each fall.
• Restricts UC admin’s ability to unilaterally change practices and policies without consulting us.
• Revises performance review criteria and materials to increase relevance and specificity.
• Provides for one course release per year for a UC-AFT member steward at each campus to support their work educating members of their rights and responsibilities and representing members in dispute resolution processes.

How We Got Here

Let’s be clear: we didn’t reach this agreement through negotiating skill alone. Rather, this agreement is the direct result of the organized people power — that’s you! — we brought to bear on UC management over the last two and a half years. In particular, you:

• By a 91% margin, voted to authorize a strike
• Sent over 2500 letters to UC administrators
• Observed our negotiations on Zoom (nearly 2000 of you!)
• Submitted 1000+ public comments to the UC Board of Regents and signed up to testify in public meetings
• Made hundreds of phone calls to President Drake’s office
• Tweeted at @UCPrezDrake hundreds of times in the last few days alone
• Showed up for car caravans and virtual rallies (hundreds of you, at the height of the pandemic!)