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Reappointment Rights and Troubleshooting...Urgent Deadlines!

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Hundreds of pre-continuing lecturers at UC Berkeley and UC Merced have now received two-year appointments for 2022-2024, bringing them stability and security they've never experienced before. In 2024, many of these faculty will be eligible for three-year appointments or Excellence Reviews, which can lead to the additional job security of a Continuing Appointment (indefinite, ongoing employment that doesn't need to be renewed).

On June 1, reappointment letters are due at San Diego, Riverside, Irvine, Davis, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and UCLA

Unfortunately, we're already aware of attempts by some department chairs to circumvent these improvements. Some lecturers have been told that they're losing their jobs because their department chairs disagree with the new contract's emphasis on retaining good instructors. Others have been told that their classes will now be taught by Assistant Adjuncts, who are typically forced out of the university after two to three years and are doubly disadvantaged because they are neither unionized nor part of the Academic Senate.

Such repudiations of our collective bargaining agreement--which UC administrators are all committed to honor--are retaliatory and wrong. Yet there are parts of our university that are so addicted to cheap, disposable labor that they will go to great lengths to continue exploiting it.

We've been here before, and we know how to fight back. Lecturers experienced similarly ugly backlashes against major improvements in our contract after we won Continuing Appointments in 2003. Just as we had to enforce our contract assertively then to make sure Continuing Appointments were implemented fairly, we have to stand up now to protect the jobs of pre-continuing lecturers who deserve to benefit from our new contract.

So, we need to be in contact, conversation, and community with you. If you're a pre-continuing lecturer who wants to teach next year, but you have not received a reappointment letter by the appropriate due date (May 1st at Merced and Berkeley; June 1st at all other campuses), you should do two things:

1) Let us know immediately via this Google Form

and

2) Request written feedback from your department chair by June 15th of this year. (Suggested template: "Dear [Dept Chair's Name], I'd like to request written feedback on my teaching during the 2021-2022 academic year, consistent with Section 4 of the transition plan for pre-six appointees.") Your Unit 18 faculty bargaining team negotiated this language specifically to prevent unnecessary job losses by establishing records of satisfactory performance. So please use it!

If you're a continuing lecturer or you already have an appointment letter for 2022-2024, check in with your fellow lecturers to see whether all is going as expected. Share this message with them if they didn't see it. If there's a problem, share with them the two steps above. And if you have additional questions, you can follow up with your chapter's UC-AFT member leaders and staff.