Bay Area Chapter Candidate Statements - Spring 2022 Executive Board Elections

Candidates for Co-Chair

Barbara Barnes, UCB Continuing Lecturer, Gender & Women’s Studies

I am a continuing lecturer in Gender & Women’s Studies, where I have taught since spring, 2007. I became involved with our Bay Area Chapter of UC-AFT because I realized that the few job protections and access to benefits we have as lecturers are only due to the collective action of our bargaining unit. Like most of us, I am also frustrated by the two-tiered faculty system at UC and the ways in which it creates precocity for lecturers, as well as unstable learning conditions for students. If chosen as co-chair, I am looking forward to working with the chapter to continue to build community, and to support our work on enforcement of the provisions in our new contract that protect secure, fair, and humane working conditions for lecturers and librarians.

Tim Vollmer, UCB Librarian, Scholarly Communication and Copyright

I’m Tim Vollmer, librarian in the Office of Scholarly Communication Services at UC Berkeley Library since August 2019. I’m committed to productive labor organizing to build power for librarians and lecturers. For the last year I’ve been a collective member of the Bay Area chapter e-board, and I’ve been a part of the local Unit 17 Librarian Organizing Committee since I started at Berkeley. If I’m elected chapter co-chair, I’m excited to help organize together for the next librarian contract campaign, and continue to support the implementation and enforcement of the Unit 18 contract. I’m dedicated to listening and learning from union comrades (within UC-AFT and beyond), and working to bring new voices to our group too.

Candidates for Collective Members

Crystal Chang Cohen, UCB Continuing Lecturer, Interdisciplinary Social Science Program

My name is Crystal Chang Cohen and I am a Continuing Lecturer in the International and Area Studies Program. I became involved with the union two years ago. Through my work on the current contract campaign, I have come to appreciate the crucial role UC-AFT plays in protecting our rights and expanding our access to healthcare and pension benefits. Only through community building and collective action can we pressure the administration to appropriately compensate us for our contributions to the teaching mission of this University. I would be honored for the opportunity to continue building our union’s power in these challenging times. Thank you for your consideration.

Charlie Macquarie, UCSF Librarian, Digital Archivist

I am excited to be running for the UC-AFT Bay Area Chapter Collective, and to continue building solidarity for librarians and lecturers from UCSF to UC Berkeley to UC Hastings. As budgets tighten across the UC, we know that organizing and movement building will be necessary to ensure that the UC continues to uphold its responsibilities to librarians, lecturers, and all the staff that do the everyday work of making a world-class public university-run, and I am here for that work. In addition, as the UC Libraries and the University as a whole continue to ebb and flow in our reckoning with the roles we have played in anti-black racism, theft of indigenous land and cultural knowledge, and militarized police violence, there are great opportunities within AFT for coalition building towards true justice, and I look forward to pushing on these possibilities. Thank you for considering me as a candidate for the Bay Area Chapter Collective.

Matthew Specter, UCB Lecturer, Interdisciplinary Social Science Program and Legal Studies

I have been attending union meetings and actions since arriving in 2017. In the past year I have been active on the CAT team for UC Berkeley and attended many bargaining sessions, which have shown me the need for collective action to transform the lecturer track from gig to stable career. It is not only in our interest but that of the institution and the undergraduates who will be the PhDs of tomorrow. Let's force UC to create a viable career path for them as well as us.

Cathy Bordel, UCB Continuing Lecturer, Physics

After 11 years spent as an associate professor at the University of Rouen (France), I joined the UC Berkeley physics department in 2009. I have been a lecturer - and member of our union - since the Fall of 2011 and became a continuing lecturer in the Fall of 2017. I believe very strongly in the power of collective bargaining and I think that the contract that we won after 2 years of relentless negotiations in the middle of a pandemic is proof that our union gives us incredible strength. I would like to join our chapter board to be part of the local leadership team whose focus during this upcoming year will be toward contract enforcement and conflict resolution.

Khalid Kadir, UCB Continuing Lecturer, Interdisciplinary Social Science Programs & Engineering

I am a Continuing Lecturer in both Interdisciplinary Social Science Programs (ISSP) and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. I am eager to contribute to making our union a force for positive change, both for lecturers and librarians as well as for our entire university community and beyond. To that end, I would like to help with ongoing efforts towards increasing participation in our union as well as work towards organizing collectively with other groups in our community.

Gus Tupper, UCB Clinical Teaching Fellow, Berkeley Law

I am a teaching fellow in the Policy Advocacy Clinic at Berkeley Law. I work with organizers, young people, and local groups in the Northwest and Mountain West to end racist and regressive financial penalties in the juvenile system. I am interested in racial and economic justice, social movements, and how law can make space for community responses to harm outside the legal system. I come from a proud union family and UC-AFT is his fourth union membership. I am excited to join the board of our chapter of UC-AFT because this union community has been such a fun, odd part of my time as a lecturer. Participating in the most recent contract campaign was, of course, very energizing, and I would love to turn that energy toward longer-term projects supporting labor, students, and justice across our campuses. This local is vibrant and I want to be part of its future!

Council Delegates Serving in Two-Year Terms

Joanna Reed, UCB Continuing Lecturer, Sociology

I am a Continuing Lecturer in the sociology department and have been involved in our chapter for the past 5 years, three years as a collective member, and the last two years as Lecturer co-chair. Over that time, the board has worked to make our union more democratic, participatory and focused on member engagement, in addition to continuing to provide services to members. I am proud to have been part of these efforts and I am looking forward to continuing this work into the coming year as a collective member and state council delegate, as we fight for a new and improved contract for lecturers, make sure that librarians' hard won gains are honored by the UC administration and stand with other campus unions to ensure that the university treats all its workers with the respect they deserve.

David Eifler, UCB Librarian, Environmental Design

I am a librarian who has been active in the bargaining collective, on the bargaining table team with I-Wei Wang and who served as librarian co-chair of the local executive collective for two years.  I look forward to the opportunity to represent Berkeley's interests at the UC-AFT Statewide Council in our collective endeavor to secure increased job security for lecturers and professional autonomy for librarians.

Margaret Phillips, Librarian for Education, Gender & Women's Studies, Psychology

I have been a librarian at UC for more than 30 years. But I only became actively involved in UC-AFT during the last few years when I realized the Union's goals are nothing less than the goals of the University -- to provide quality public higher education and research in the State of California. I look forward to serving on the UC-AFT Statewide Council.