UC’s Problem: Lecturers don’t have control over the technologies we are forced to use. 

Technology plays an increasing vital role in our classrooms, but UC administrators unilaterally decide what technologies are used. UC signs expensive contracts with third-party vendors, giving them access to our course materials and our classrooms without our consent, and imposes technological engagements that we do not choose and that serve no pedagogical value. Our autonomy in the classroom is increasingly threatened and our professionalism is regularly undermined.

• UC offers no transparency around what data they are collecting about us and where that data goes; 
• Third-party vendors have access to our images, lecture content, and audio and video recordings, threatening our intellectual property and privacy rights; 
• New requirements related to classroom technologies and accessibility create new complications and additional work, for which teaching faculty are not compensated; 
• New forms of surveillance and electronic monitoring are introduced into our classrooms without our consent;
• Our current contract does not offer a way to challenge or remediate issues regarding technology, privacy, and data collection. 

Our Solutions: New Protections for Teaching Faculty

Your Unit 18 Table Team will be  introducing new contract articles to ensure that lecturers retain their privacy and autonomy in the classroom and what tools they use to teach. Our initial proposals include:

• Protect the privacy of teachers, students, and anyone else in our classrooms. (New article)
• Guarantee the freedom of teaching faculty to choose which, if any, software they will use to facilitate learning in their classrooms. (New article, 2)
• Ensure that changing technologies don’t result in lecturers being laid off or reduced in time. (New article, 17)
• Prevent workload creep from bigger mixed format classes, new technology interfaces, or other modes of remote instruction (New article, 24).

UC’s Problem: Academic freedom is under attack on campus and beyond

As contingent faculty, we are particularly vulnerable to attacks on academic freedom, at the UC and across the United States. Our current contract language concerning investigations and discipline for U18 teaching faculty currently suffers from a lack of clarity and precision – areas of ambiguity that the UC has used against many lecturers in the last several years.

• Each campus within the UC has its own provisions in the Academic Personnel Manual (APM), and applies them in inconsistent and arbitrary ways; 
• The sole authority to adjudicate violations of our academic freedom rests with the Academic Senate, who don’t always understand our particular circumstances as non-tenured faculty (Contract Article 2);
• Because we teach and mentor more undergraduate students, in fraught times, we become the front line for discussions about troubling current events and challenging, controversial topics;
• Many lecturers feel insecure and unclear about what activities and expressions are protected and what are not;
• Many lecturers have significant pedagogical concerns about what we can say in the classroom; 
• Under our current contract, we can’t grieve or arbitrate violations, depriving us of the fair representation we deserve (Article 2);
• Attacks on our university by the current federal administration make our fight for academic freedom, equity in the workplace, and social justice more urgent than ever before.

Our Solution: Equitable Academic Freedom

Your Unit 18 Bargaining Team is committed to fighting for clear processes to resolve disputes about our rights, and establishing clear protections against the unfair discipline or dismissal of our members. Our initial proposals for the new contract include: 

• Protect U18 faculty’s rights to support student activism and political protest both within and outside the classroom. (Articles 2 and 3)
• Ensure that U18 faculty can write, speak, teach, and post about controversial topics, including race, racism, and gender, without fear of disciplines from UC administration or our departments (Articles 2 and 3)
• Protect our ethnic studies and gender studies programs from outside political influences. (Articles 2 and 3)
• Establish a system of adjudication in which lecturers, not the academic senate, review disciplinary cases involving other lecturers (Articles 2 and 30)
• Strengthen the principle of progressive discipline by making procedures clear, binding, and fully grievable. (Articles 30 and 32)
• Give lecturers a seat at the table in any appeal or review process involving the academic senate (Article 30)
• Clarify that groups of lecturers may file grievances together on disciplinary or any other grounds (Articles 30 and 32)
• Update disciplinary process timelines to be clearer and more reasonable (Articles 30 and 32).

UC’s Problem: Regardless of status, ALL Unit 18 faculty members are in inherently precarious roles.

Unit 18 lecturers teach 30-40% of credit hours at UC, but the majority of lecturers doing this teaching must reapply for their jobs multiple times before being recognized as permanent employees. The pervasive mindset among leadership, from department chairs to chancellors to the regents, is that lecturers are temporary and disposable.

Even having continuing or senior status is no guarantee of stability–it’s far from the security enjoyed by tenured colleagues, who aren’t at risk of being pushed out or having sections cut in favor of visiting professors, professors of teaching, and grad students. At the end of the day, most of the problems in our current contract stem from the simple fact that our jobs are not secure.

• Only 18% of Unit 18 teaching faculty are considered full-time employees and only 23% have continuing appointments;
• 56.6% of teaching faculty are very part-time, meaning they don’t have access to healthcare and benefits;
• When budget cuts are made, they impact teaching faculty first: over 200 teaching faculty saw their appointments reduced or their jobs eliminated entirely in 2025.
• Currently, pre-6 lecturers must complete multiple reappointment processes before reaching continuing status, which creates significant uncertainty about a lecturers’ pathway to continuing status.
• In many cases, UC management does not follow its own rules. Departments fail to meet deadlines for merit and excellence reviews and the outcomes of those reviews are not grievable under our current contract (Contract Articles 7bF1, 7cE3, & 7dC1)
• Unit 18 teaching faculty can lose their jobs for many reasons, defined as “lack of work,” “programmatic need/change,” and “budget considerations” in our current contract. UC can also easily replace us with graduate students, senate faculty, post docs, and non-represented teaching positions. (Articles 7A & 17).

Our Solutions: An End to Precarity

Your Unit 18 Bargaining Team is committed to fighting to end precarity for all teaching faculty. Our initial proposals for the new contract include:

• Open-Ended Appointments
  • All faculty will be considered permanent employees from day one of hiring. 
  • No more reapplications, no more opportunities to get rid of lecturers on their way to continuing status, sparing departments additional administrative burden.
  • Job security similar to that our tenure-track colleagues enjoy. (Articles 7a, 7b) 
• Clear, consistent, standards for establishing continuing status
  • Clear and workable pathways to the senior continuing position.  (Articles 7a, 7b, 7c, 7d)
  • Tangible benefits for moving along the lecturer career path, both financial and non-financial. (Articles 7c, 7d)
• Close the layoff loophole
  • New options to avoid laying off employees in times of budgetary crisis. (Article 17)
  • Extending critical Layoff/Reductions in Time protections to pre-6 lecturers.
  • Once a lecturer is hired, the only way they can be separated from the position is through layoff, discipline, dismissal, or medical separation.
  • Replacement by senate faculty, grad students, and post-docs will no longer be a reason for layoff.
• Expanded Instructional Support in terms of teaching assistants and readers for Unit 18 teaching faculty (Article 8)