Local 1474 Executive Board Elections 2016

Local 1474 conducts annual elections for our executive board.  The nominations period for all offices is open until April 29, 2016.  Candidate statements are posted below.

Local President

Jonathan Lang, Lecturer, College Writing Programs, UC Berkeley, jlang@ucaft.org

I have held the following positions in this local: Chair of the Election Committee (3 years); Grievance Steward (5.5 years); President of the Local Board (2 years) and Vice President (3 years). In addition, I have served on the Bargaining Team working on negotiating the Lecturer's Contract since Fall 2013.  The most recent set of negotiations resulted in significant salary gains for everyone and improved the contract for our pre-6 NSF.

As a union, we have made great strides in increasing our membership, primarily under the stress of court cases which threaten the union’s ability to represent its membership in achieving salary gains and making professional improvements. We have the best NSF (non senate faculty) contract in the country (especially for our continuing membership), but we can do better to represent faculty who have not yet reached that status. The university cavalierly considers NSF to be “contingent” in spite of increasing reliance on NSF. Our most recent gains in the contract were achieved in spite of the university’s intransigence in treating NSF decently.
But increase in membership doesn’t mean that membership is engaged enough in many of the fights we have ahead. The most recent budget crisis suggests that the university administration is faltering in its core mission and core values—in actually providing the funds for educating students—and in supporting stable faculty positions that make that education possible. As a union, we need not only to increase our membership, but to engage our membership in what is an ongoing battle to make the university a good place to teach and learn. I have tried to make outreach a key concern of the local in the past few years. Moreover, I have played a key role in reaching out to other local leaders at Merced, UCLA, UCD, UCSC in order to support the Berkeley local in joint efforts to put pressure on the local administration to support our contract efforts; and I am uniquely positioned to continue to bring the campuses together to realize our shared goals.
Our local also needs to play a more substantial role at the systemwide union level. At the systemwide level we will need to modernize our by-laws so that leadership at all levels is responsive to the immediate needs of the members who drive our union
Because of my years of work at both the local and systemwide level in multiple positions, my extensive knowledge of the contract, my role in increasing membership and membership engagement, my extensive relationships with the most engaged members across the many campuses of the University of California, I believe I am best suited to run for President of the local in this upcoming year.

Member at Large

Tiffany Page, Lecturer, Sociology and International and Area Studies, UC Berkeley
I am a pre-six lecturer in Sociology and International and Area Studies. I am interested in working toward making the union a more democratic and participatory space, increasing engagement in the union, and building community among lecturers. I believe that this will help strengthen our local, and help us in the struggle to gain better terms of employment for pre-six lecturers during the next round of bargaining.

Michelle Koerner, Lecturer, French, UC Berkeley
I have been teaching at UC Berkeley for three years. I currently teach Reading and Composition in the French department. I have been active in the local for the past year. I am excited to work with others to build a strong community within our local focused on lecturer’s needs and concerns. To that end, my goals are to increase active membership and democratic participation in the local. In addition, in the coming year I would like to see our union continue to plan social events where lecturers can meet one another and, if there is interest, a reading/study group focused on building intellectual solidarity among lecturers.

Joseph Lough, Lecturer, Economics, UC Berkeley, 
I am the cause of an unsuccessful grievance against International and Area Studies and have lived to tell the tale. I am passionate about the life of learning and scholarship. I am convinced that since lecturers and librarians account for the lion’s share of efficiencies enjoyed by the University of California system, they deserve to be compensated and protected in a manner commensurate with these efficiencies. I am eager to help the University redistribute these efficiencies more broadly redirecting them from the least efficient value-producers on campus toward those by whom they have been produced. This will help redress the simultaneous decline in the quality of educational goods and the increase in costs. I look forward to working with other members to develop strategies and proposals to enhance the life of the mind for all members of our teaching and learning community.