Amidst a scorching summer heat wave, UC-AFT members gathered at UCSD on August 27 for our third bargaining session of the summer. The agenda was jam-packed: We brought six article proposals to the table, focused on the issues UC-AFT members identified as top bargaining priorities, including:
- job security
- protections from workplace discrimination, abuse and retaliation
- support and protections for faculty on non-immigrant visas
- access to benefits
Together, these proposals lay out the kind of UC we are fighting to build: A UC where Unit 18 faculty can build stable, sustainable careers. A UC that protects its most vulnerable members and actively fights discrimination and abusive conduct. A UC that takes care of the people who take care of it.
Merced Layoffs: UC says move on. We say fight back.
The session started with heartfelt testimony from Helen Sandoval, a former Continuing Lecturer whom UC Merced laid off in 2025, after twelve years in the Merritt Writing Program.
“I built a life there with my family, three little boys. Many of my colleagues had built their lives there,” Helen shared. “We get this notice. So we’re asking ourselves why… Why me? Is it me? What did I do? What’s going on here? Why, after 12 years—just questioning. You can imagine how difficult it was.”
Helen ultimately was able to find a position at UCSD, but the layoff cost Helen her Continuing Lecturer status, and forced her to uproot her family, and move to an area with dramatically higher cost of living and an hour-long commute to campus.
“Everyone felt like family,” Helen said of her former program. “And then to be treated like that was very difficult. It’s still difficult.”
Helen is not alone. In UC Merced’s Merritt Writing Program, 25% of our fellow teaching faculty received layoff notices in 2025. This spring, another 10% received notices.
UC is well aware of this issue. We have raised the Merced layoffs at nearly every bargaining session since April.
While bargaining can help us win stronger protections against future layoffs, members are also fighting back against the harm already done. On August 27, UC-AFT filed Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charges alleging that UC Merced unlawfully restructured its budget “to make mass layoffs of Unit 18 lecturers an inevitability.”
You can read the ULP filing (which includes 500+ pages of evidence…) here. And stay tuned for more information about how you can fight back against layoffs this fall.
We deserve fair treatment, not just federal minimums
UC administrators claim they prioritize protecting our rights and the rights of our students, but too often they refuse to exceed the bare minimum protections required by law.
Our proposal on Article 4: Non Discrimination in Employment moves beyond bare-minimum “non-discrimination” and toward actively confronting discrimination and inequity. We proposed expanding protected identities, addressing barriers to promotion and employment, and requiring UC to identify and address and identify systemic barriers and inequalities.
We also proposed protections against abusive conduct and retaliation—two glaring holes in our current article—along with stronger and more timely grievance processes, and requirements that UC actually meet its own deadlines for investigating discrimination and abusive conduct.
Rights on paper are not enough when workers are too afraid of retaliation to report discrimination or misconduct, or when people who do report discrimination or harassment are trapped in investigations and grievance processes that drag on for months or years.
Read our Article 4 proposal here
Faculty on visas deserve stability
Our UC-AFT table team also proposed major changes to Article 34: Immigration Reform and Control Act, strengthening support for Unit 18 faculty on non-immigrant visas. Our proposal would improve protections around work authorization, expand immigration and legal assistance, support H-1B visas and permanent residency, and strengthen protections against immigration enforcement.
UC Irvine table team member Shannon Alfaro introduced the proposal with anonymized testimony from multiple Unit 18 faculty whose lives and careers have been upended by current UC policies and administrative failures, including visa instability, lost housing and income, and family separation.
In one shocking example, a lecturer lost an entire academic year of teaching and their apartment. And to top it off, UC then required them to fly from Europe to California for a single day to sign a form … electronically … through DocuSign.
We know that UC can do better, because other universities already do. Many of our proposed protections are modeled on provisions already won at peer universities. We call on UC to meet that standard.
For more details, see the full Article 34 proposal here.
Clear, fair reviews mean real career paths
Merit and promotion review practices can vary dramatically from campus to campus and within divisions and departments—making career advancement confusing and unfair decisions harder to challenge.
Our proposals on Articles 22 and 31 would make these processes clearer and more consistent, strengthen pathways to Continuing Lecturer and Senior Continuing Lecturer, expand protections against arbitrary or discriminatory review decisions, prohibit the use of AI in review decisions, and increase raises for successful merit and promotion reviews.
These proposals complement the other job security proposals (including on articles 7a and 7b) that we have already brought to the table. Our goal is simple: Unit 18 work should be a career, not just a job.
Read our proposals on Article 22 and Article 31
University Benefits for Those Who Benefit the University
We need reliable access to affordable benefits, or our jobs are simply not sustainable.
Many UC-AFT members struggle to access basic benefits like Social Security or healthcare, and those who do qualify for health insurance have suffered skyrocketing premium increases in recent years. And many of us cannot afford to live in the communities where we teach. Even when campus housing benefit programs do exist, Unit 18 faculty often are excluded or kicked to the back of the waitlist behind Senate Faculty.
Our proposal on Article 11: Benefits would make all Unit 18 faculty eligible for Social Security, extend access to healthcare eligibility, limit health insurance premium increases over the life of the contract, and make Unit 18 faculty eligible for all campus benefits offered to Senate faculty.
At the bargaining table and beyond, we will press the point that UC should take care of the people who take care of it.
Read our Article 11 proposal here
Meanwhile, what is UC proposing?
At the June 4 bargaining session, UC proposed adding “presumptive resignation” to our contract. This would be a new mechanism that could treat faculty as having resigned if they are out of contact with the University for a week. UC’s chief negotiator said it was intended to “address a ghosting situation, as the kids say.”
While UC-AFT has spent months proposing ways to make Unit 18 careers more secure, one of UC’s biggest proposed changes would make it easier to lose your job.
We rejected it.
UC also presented two proposals this session: Article 12 – Leaves and a new article on Paid Sick Leaves, which they claim will “dramatically expand” paid sick leave for Unit 18 faculty. We support that goal. Now we’ll review the language and make sure the proposals actually deliver on it.
What’s next? September 24 Bargaining at UC Davis
This summer, your table team negotiated a one-year contract extension that gave us more time to push UC at the table, and secured UC-AFT members a 4% raise. (Check your September 1 paystub to ensure you received yours!)
The extension also requires both sides to submit all initial article proposals by December 1, 2026. So expect action-packed bargaining sessions and plenty more bargaining news, as we put members’ priorities on the table and find out what UC is willing to offer.
Our next bargaining session is Thursday, September 24 at UC Davis. Bargaining will take place at School of Education 174 from 10:00am – 4:30pm, with a rally at noon at the courtyard outside. Come watch the fight from the front row and show UC that the people behind our proposals are paying attention.
RSVP for September 24!
Future bargaining sessions are also planned for October 8 (potentially at UC Riverside) and November 5-6 (potentially at UC Merced). Now’s the time to get plugged in on your campus and get involved.
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