As of 10/6/2020, well over 500 Academic Senate faculty have signed the UC Senate Faculty Pledge of Solidarity with Lecturer Colleagues. After two years of negotiations and for the first time in 20 years, our UC-AFT colleagues voted with an overwhelming majority of 96% to authorize a strike. We echo UC-AFT’s demands that President Drake and the UC Board of Regents settle a new contract that genuinely addresses their priorities. Here is a press release on our efforts.
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You can view the September 20 CUCFA/UC-AFT Town Hall meeting where over 100 Senate faculty members from around the system had the chance to hear from UC-AFT leaders and ask questions about the union’s priorities and faculty rights in the event of a strike.
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UC workforce churn: Why a quarter of lecturers don’t return each year,
https://calmatters.org/
by Mikhail Zinshteyn October 5, 2021
This is a comprehensive and well-researched article which includes CUCFA’s press release for the Pledge and the emphasis of how key tenure track faculty support is to this campaign. Harold Marcuse, a history professor at UC Santa Barbara, and an SBFA Board member summer up an important reason for tenured faculty’s support for the lecturers. Longer contracts for lecturers means less headache for administrative faculty in searching for new lecturers: “Once we have found them, we want to keep them, and keep them happy.” Debbie Gould, a sociology professor at UC Santa Cruz and co-chair of the campus’s faculty association was quoted in this piece with its succinct analysis of UC’s austerity logic, again citing tenured faculty support.”Tenured faculty in solidarity with the lecturers argue that the UC’s shortchanging of lecturers is part of a “cost-cutting logic” that “starves our academic departments and programs that tells us to do more with less.”
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Wednesday, September 29, 2021 , Daily Cal
At UC Regents meetings, lecturers demand response from Michael Drake
By Rina Rossi, Anishi Patel and Tarunika Kapoor
“Eileen Boris, feminist studies professor at UC Santa Barbara, expressed her support for the lecturers’ demands for performance review. She added lecturers often have the same degrees and training as UC senate faculty. “The peoples of California deserve a UC that puts instruction first, not disposability of instructors,” Boris said during the meeting. “UC can lead the way for the nation.””
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CUCFA’s Solidarity with UC-AFT’s Fight for a Fair Contract
CUCFA’s Press Release reposted in the AAUP blog.
September 29, 2021