Below is a letter from the Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) and the Santa Cruz Faculty Association (SCFA) asking UC to cease and desist from interfering with faculty’s protected rights.
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January 17, 2023
Letitia Silas
Executive Director, Labor Relations
UC Office of the President
1111 Franklin Street
Oakland, CA 94607
Delivered via Email to: Letitia.Silas@ucop.edu
Re: UC’s Interference with Faculty’s Protected Rights
Dear Labor Relations Executive Director Silas,
We write on behalf of the Council of University of California Faculty Associations, and the Santa Cruz Faculty Association, to demand that UC cease and desist from circulating or attempting to collect responses on the “Attestation Form for Faculty” it has recently distributed. UC’s attempt to survey faculty regarding whether they honored the UAW picket line interferes with faculty’s right to engage in concerted activity. It is unlawful and must stop immediately.
As UC has itself recognized, the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act (HEERA) grants non-managerial Senate faculty the same right as other employees to engage in concerted activity for mutual aid and protection. Non-striking employees who honor a picket line by refusing to cross or by withholding their own labor in solidarity are engaged in protected activity, and it is illegal to discipline, discriminate, or retaliate against those workers. (See City and County of San Francisco (2017) PERB Decision No. 2536-M, pp. 19-22; Trustees of the California State University (2017) PERB Decision No. 2522-H, pp. 16-17.)
It is also illegal for UC to poll or interrogate workers about their intent to honor a picket line or engage in other protected activity, and to surveil employee protected activity. (See Alliance of College Ready Public Schools (2020) PERB Decision No. 2716, pp. 26-28 [public employer interfered with protected rights by polling employees about union support]; City of Commerce (2018) PERB Decision No. 2602-M, pp. 5-6 [public employer questioning of employee’s interfered with protected rights]; Special Touch Home Care Services, Inc. (2011) 357 NLRB 4, 11 [finding it unlawful under the NLRA to poll employees about intent to strike except in limited healthcare context].) UC acknowledged as much in guidance it issued before the strike, warning supervisors against surveying or questioning employees about their intent to support the strike or about their union activity.
Despite these clear prohibitions, UC has for the first time instituted the “attestation” forms that it distributed on January 13, 2023. Although there are uncountable instances in which faculty have cancelled a class or missed committee or department meetings without being made to account for their time or agree to pay deductions, UC is now attempting to interrogate faculty about how they spent their time during the strike and to force faculty to submit to a three-month deduction plan. Not only does this violate Labor Code provisions that prohibit involuntary wage deductions, this policy change has come about only because faculty engaged in protected activity. In fact, the form clearly links the withholding of labor to the UAW strike and asks faculty about whether they withheld labor only for the duration of the strike, not for any other time period. There is no question that the form targets and penalizes concerted activity only, with the intent of chilling faculty’s exercise of their protected rights.
UC has the right to withhold pay from academic workers who engage in a strike, but it cannot institute a retaliatory system of polling about strike activity or force payroll deductions in violation of the Labor Code because of faculty solidarity with other workers. UC’s deliberate implementation of these forms in response to protected activity is illegal. To remedy this interference with faculty’s protected rights, UC must immediately rescind and disavow these forms.
Sincerely,
Constance Penley, President Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA)
Wendy Matsumura, Vice President Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA)
Jessica Taft, Co-Chair of the Santa Cruz Faculty Association (SCFA)