UC’s Problem: Existing career pathways for skilled and experienced educators are unstable 

UC teaching faculty believe that every UC student deserves access to high quality instruction, delivered by professional educators who value critical thinking, information literacy, and free inquiry. Our collective bargaining agreement outlines procedures for academic reviews and awards merit pay increases to those who pass them. But in practice, these processes can feel opaque and capricious. Promotion structures vary from campus to campus and within divisions and departments, making it difficult for teaching faculty to grieve arbitrary and unjust review outcomes. Our current contract language creates uncertainties that make all Unit 18 faculty, even those in advanced stages of their careers, feel precarious.  

UC-AFT members voted nearly unanimously that establishing security of employment must be a central pillar of our new contract campaign. There are several articles in our contract related to job security, including articles 7a, 7b, 7c, and 7d, which outline the nature of our appointments. Our Table Team has offered exciting proposals on the 7s that would restructure our positions as open-ended appointments with permanent budget lines and eliminate the painful reappointment process.

Learn more about our proposals on the 7s here

Our table team has also put forward proposals on Articles 22 and 31. Our hope is to strengthen our career pathways by reorganizing and refining merit review processes, making them more consistent across campuses, and ensuring our fellow Unit 18 faculty have a role in the process.

Article 22 – Merit and Promotion Review (current article here)

We are proposing to reorganize the structure of our current contract Article 22 to make it easier to enforce the protections therein. We are also proposing changes that will align review processes with our transformative proposals on the 7s and increase our compensation. This includes new language that:

• Regularizes merit reviews for all Unit 18 academic employees to every three years;

• Standardizes promotion structures and review periods across campuses;
• Guarantees full voting rights for Unit 18 faculty members serving on review committees;
• Provides a “terminal year” to Lecturers who do not pass the excellence review and need to go on the job market; 
• Raises salary point increases for positive merit and promotion reviews:
  • Positive merit review (for Continuing or Senior Continuing) – 3 salary points 
  • Positive Promotion Excellence review – 4 salary points 
  • Positive Promotion review (for Senior Continuing) – 4 salary points

• Ensures there are no ceilings on salary point increases for merit and promotion reviews and that salary increases go into effect on time to reduce late notice and “retroactive” payments.
• Prohibits the use of AI in merit and promotion reviews.
• Prohibits artificial caps on the number of Unit 18 faculty who are promoted or receive accelerated merits.

Article 31 – Academic Review Criteria (current article here)

Our proposal on Article 31 clarifies the standards of academic excellence to promote consistency and fairness in reviews and enhances our ability to grieve arbitrary and capricious review outcomes. This includes:

• Adding language prohibiting arbitrary, capricious, and discriminatory decisions with merits and promotions; 
• Adding more clear and explicit definitions for the standards for each review (pre-continuing merit, excellence review, senior continuing promotion review, and continuing and senior continuing merit);
• Expanding the criteria for teaching faculty whose assignments are not limited to instruction;
• Outlining which review materials are required and optional;
• Tightening rules around the use of student comments and evaluations in reviews;
• Clarifying that teaching faculty’s creative work, professional and university service may be taken into account in merit reviews;
• Expanding parameters for grieving unjust decisions.