Key Takeaways:

• It was a BIG day: we proposed transformational language on Article 7a, which would protect our jobs, close loopholes, and create real job security
• The session was chock-full of emotional testimony from UC-AFT faculty and students about the cruelty of precarity, with hundreds in the zoom room
• Meanwhile, UC attempted to drag us back to the beginning of negotiations with a regressive proposal on ground rules.

The zoom room was packed with over 200 teaching faculty and students when our bargaining session with UC began on Thursday at 10am. The morning session consisted of moving testimony from our colleagues and students, including those from UC Berkeley’s FPF (Fall Program for First Semester), where 29 lecturers have recently received layoff notices. These lecturers had already been through a tough fight to win union recognition in the first place: having been denied access to healthcare and union salary scales for years, they filed Unfair Labor Practice charges that forced UCB to pay over $400,000 in unpaid back wages. UCB administration has now announced it will be shutting the 43 year-old program down, leaving hundreds of students without the support they need. “We explore the perspectives of others with more openness and intimacy than anywhere else on campus,” said FPF faculty Devin Leigh in his testimony. With his baby daughter in his lap, Leigh shared how his students have struggled with feelings of inadequacy, along with housing and food insecurity. “By closing FPF,” Leigh said, “UCB is closing one of the few spaces we have to intervene in people’s lives at meaningful moments.” His sentiments were echoed by fellow FPF lecturers Amy Lee, Sharon Coleman, Arunima Paul, and Ken Worthy, who added that after 12 years of teaching in the program, he still struggles to maintain consistent access to health insurance, library services, and even campus email. “It’s hard to be fully present for suffering students,” Worthy shared, “but I do it because they’re worth it.”

These sentiments were echoed by FPF students, who also packed the zoom room. Gabby, Brissias, Annaka, and Omar each shared that they would not have survived at UCB without the support they received from FPF teaching faculty. Most are first generation college students, living far from home, who relied on the academic and emotional support of their teachers to adjust to life on campus and find a sense of community and belonging. Others shared that the FPF program was what drew them to UCB in the first place, and alumni of the program noted that letters of recommendation from FPF lecturers helped them start their careers. “The way that Berkeley is treating their lecturers tells students, and the world, that Berkeley doesn’t care about education,” UCB student Gabby Wong asserted at the end of her testimony. “Students want smaller class sizes. Students want smaller sections. But most of all, students want lecturers’ livelihoods restored.”

The emotional testimony underscored what is at stake in our fight for real job security. They demonstrated that our work is not confined to the classroom, and that we provide our students far more than our academic expertise. Like FPF faculty, many of us teach core curriculum, smaller classes, and first-year writing classes that students rely on, providing crucial mentorship and support to our university’s most underserved and historically marginalized students. While we treasure the opportunity for substantive interaction and individualized learning, these courses are often the first victims of budget cuts. At the beginning of the session colleagues from UC Merced issued a forceful reminder to the UCOP’s representatives of the mass layoffs on their campus, where 25% of lecturers, including 40% of the writing program’s instructors, have been laid off since our last contract was signed in 2021. When pressed for a response at the last bargaining session, UCOP reps said they would “follow up” by the next session. 

“What I want to say is, it’s personal, to all of us.”

After the students finished, several UC-AFT members spoke to the issues our proposals are designed to solve. Table Team member Alison Lipman, a Continuing Lecturer in Ecology at UCLA, shared her gut-wrenching experience of being recruited to develop field work courses in biodiversity in collaboration with Indigenous communities in Southern California, only to see those courses cut 15 years later. Even though Alison and her teaching partner won grant funding, spearheaded innovative ecological restoration projects on campus, and helped to build climate vulnerability assessment systems for the entire UC, they are being squeezed out of the department they’ve dedicated their lives to for no reason other than that they’re lecturers. 

The combination of betrayal, sadness, and pride that Alison expressed echoed through the comments of other UC-AFT Teaching Faculty. Audrey Harris of the Dept. of Chicano and Central American Studies at UCLA, who brings local writers and prison educators into her classrooms, worries that she will be laid off as she approaches her excellence review for Continuing Status. Amanda Reiterman, who has taught in a half dozen different programs at UCSC because of the interdisciplinary nature of her research, doubts that she will ever achieve Continuing Status because those services credits don’t transfer across departments. Darlene Lee, who has trained hundreds of K-12 educators during her 18 years in the Education Department at UCLA, shared that social justice pedagogy and off-campus programs she has developed have repeatedly been cancelled for political reasons. Darlene captured what many of us feel: “My work has been treated as an interchangeable part in the machinery of the UC.”

What We Passed to UC: Article 7 and Job Protections

As evidenced by the moving testimony of UC-AFT members, the UC has gone out of its way to find and exploit loopholes in the job security protections we fought so hard to win in 2021. Sometimes in the name of austerity, sometimes as a thinly veiled attempt to discipline Unit 18 Faculty by generalizing precarity, UC has made clear it prefers to see us as expendable labor. In the afternoon session, our Table Team presented the first piece of their solution to the problem: a transformational new proposal on Article 7a, which covers academic appointments. 
Our proposal would restructure our positions as open-ended appointments with permanent budget lines. It would eliminate the painful reappointment process, meaning employment would continue from the date of hire unless the faculty member chooses to leave or is separated for a specific, contractually-defined reason (i.e. layoff, medical separation, etc.) and would have full due-process rights to challenge that separation. Other provisions of the new proposal would:

• ensure that more Unit 18 faculty members’ work, such as teaching on multiple campuses or for several departments, will count towards continuing status; 
• create new protections against courses that Unit 18 Faculty design from being reassigned to senate faculty, graduate students, or other job titles; 
• require UC to offer augmentations to existing Unit 18 faculty rather than new hires, and to consider Unit 18 faculty for ALL the work they are qualified for,  
• empower our members to reach the appointment percentages they want and need;
• close the many layoff loopholes UC has exploited to remove experienced teachers or avoid increasing their appointment percentages to reflect actual academic need;
• protect against reductions in time.

As Table Team member Alison Lipman said, article 7a is the heart of our contract and winning strong academic appointment language would mean good, secure jobs for all teaching faculty. “I hope we can remember May 7th as a date that changes all of our lives and the university for the better. Our goals are to save jobs and save education. We’re proud of our work. I hope that UC can see the real benefits this can bring to the UC.” 

This 7a Proposal is just the first of several articles related to job security, including Articles 7b, 7c, 7d, 22 and 31. You can read the 7a proposal here. 

What would real job security mean for you, your family, and your students? Share your story at https://airtable.com/appcIR9RfXG5jmNDI/pagOEg7LsMtO9RQm4/form

What UCOP Passed to UC-AFT

After our Table Team’s stellar presentation, the UCOP representatives passed proposals of their own. The first involved Article 14 – Holidays, including changing the name of the March holiday to “Farmworkers’ Day” in accordance with new state guidelines. Unfortunately, UCOP’s second proposal flew in the face of everything that had been so powerful about the rest of the session. UCOP passed a regressive proposal on ground rules that would strictly limit access to our zoom bargaining sessions, give UCOP control over the venues in which we bargain (both online and in-person), and introduce new layers of surveillance. Asserting that access to our bargaining sessions should be limited to “individuals… impacted by the article being negotiated,” they suggested that our contract negotiations were not of “public” concern. We disagree: as teaching faculty of one of the largest public universities in the country, our contract negotiations should be as participatory, inclusive, and accessible as possible, not only for our members but for students and community members as well. The UCOP’s proposals are non-starters and our Table Team will counter.

Our next In-Person Bargaining session will be at UC Irvine on May 21 – Join us! RSVP here

Key Takeaways

• We delivered powerful testimony against layoffs at UC Merced, UCSB, and beyond;
• We proposed a new article on technology which would protect our jobs from AI, our data privacy, and our right to make expert judgments about the use of education technology in our classrooms;
• We received proposals from UCOP seeking minor language changes to articles on grievance and arbitration (Articles 32 & 33), Immigration Reform and Control Act (Article 34), discipline and dismissal (Article 30).

Testimony on Layoffs

Your UC-AFT Table Team gathered for an all day bargaining session with UCOP at UC Davis on Thursday, April 16th. The session opened with powerful testimony from Table Team member Tommy Tran from UC Merced who spoke to the devastating impact of recent layoffs of lecturers, including senior lecturers, on their campus. UC Merced administrators have imposed a new funding model that drove our education funding to the lowest of any UC, Tran shared, noting that “we spend $11,000 per student while the other UCs spend $30,000.” The Table Team also discussed a statement about layoffs of foreign language lecturers at UC Santa Barbara, where they are piloting a new Global Language Network that threatens to replace language instruction with AI. 

Tran’s testimony powerfully made clear the injustice of UC Merced’s recent layoffs. It began by asking a probing question that gets to the heart of why we have made strengthening job security a priority in our campaign: “The delegation from UC Merced would like to ask how the UC can bargain in good faith on job security if what happened to UC Merced is allowable under this contract.” Tran noted that despite the UC committing to stronger job protections in our last contract, UC Merced has since fired 25% of its lecturers and given layoff notices to another 10% this year. This, despite the fact that enrollment has grown by 6% in the last six years.

New Article on Technology in the Classroom

Next on the agenda was our Table Team’s proposal for a new article on technology in our classrooms. As Matt Oliver (UCD) noted during the bargaining session, “We have a pre-AI contract and we need to change that. It has transformed all of our lives in immediate, scary, and thoughtless ways.” The tech article team – Nolan Higdon (UCSC), Patricia Fancher (UCSB), Joseph Klett (UCB), Daraka Larimore-Hall (UCSB), Alison Lipman (UCLA) – gave brilliant presentations of the article emphasizing the urgency of updating our protections for the modern age. Daraka Larimore-Hall (UCSB) forcefully articulated what’s at stake:

“We need control over the point of technology in our workplaces. We know what the impacts are better than you guys do. We live it. It should not be a decision made bureaucratically or based on income or budgets or some shiny presentation from an AI company pitching to UCOP. It should be from our classroom instructors. What we’re proposing is a set of constraints on the University’s ability to unilaterally impose new technology and turn us and our students into guinea pigs. What’s happening in our classrooms at UC is a disaster and we’re here to save you from yourself.”

UC-AFT members from UCD and UCB also spoke in support of the article, while Alison gave a presentation about UC’s repulsive attempts to replace experienced language instructors with AI at UCSB. Such decisions, they argued, undermine the quality of instruction at UC and cannot and should not be made by administrators who lack the expertise to make decisions about the appropriate role of AI and educational technology in our classrooms. As Daraka said, the overarching purpose of this proposed article is to protect the autonomy of our classrooms and the educational mission of the UC.  

Our initial proposal includes important language that would:

•  protect our jobs by mandating human, not AI, instruction; 
•  safeguard our data and privacy through new data management requirements;
•  strengthen shared governance by creating Unit 18 campus representatives who are empowered to help make decisions and negotiate contracts with technology companies; and 
•  protect copyright and academic freedom through surveillance reduction.

You can read the full text of our proposal here.

UCOP Proposals

In the back half of the day, UC presented on Grievance & Arbitration (Article 32, Article 33), Immigration Reform & Control Act (Article 34), and Discipline & Dismissal (Article 30). Most of the changes were cosmetic (for example, the University wants to remove references to the Reagan-era IRCA legislation in Article 34 to align with current law), but there are some substantive points for the Table Team to consider. We want to be sure that seemingly minor changes in language will not undermine our rights or weaken existing protections. 

Next Session: May 7 on Zoom

Our next bargaining session will be on May 7th on Zoom. We want to take advantage of our 500 person capacity we fought to win and pack that zoom room! If you haven’t already, RSVP here.

You can join our UC-AFT community room starting at 9:30am to ask questions about what’s happening, get access to our community WhatsApp chat, and share your ideas about how to respond. We’ll use it as a caucus space throughout the day where you can connect with other lecturers across the state affected by these issues. We’ll see you there!

Key Takeaways

• We passed our Academic Freedom proposal at one of the campuses most impacted over the last several years.
• We had powerful personal testimony from five Unit 18 members who were personally affected by university discipline for exercising their free speech.
• We’ve also won on ground rules. The deal isn’t done, but we’ve already secured big, open, and most importantly hybrid bargaining! 

Article 2: Academic Freedom

Members of your UC-AFT Table Team convened another session with UCOP at UCLA on Thurs. March 19th. The big action of the day was when we passed our proposal on article 2 – academic freedom. Our proposal includes significant changes to both the definition of academic freedom and the process by which claims that academic freedom has been violated are adjudicated. Fundamental to these proposals is the recognition that our jobs are different from those of senate faculty, who don’t teach as many students as we do on average. Unit 18 teaching faculty also have much closer and more direct interactions with undergraduates than most tenured professors. Our jobs put us on the front lines of every controversy, political problem, and social issue in ways that senate faculty don’t. Nonetheless, our current contract language says that the only way we can raise claims that our freedom has been violated is through the academic senate. 

Our proposal expands the definition of what academic freedom is to include rights to speak about any social issue in the classroom, to participate in political action both on and off campus, and to talk about current or historical events in any non-campus space (digital or physical). We then proposed a mechanism to defend these rights where if a lecturer raises a claim about a violation of their academic freedom, it will be decided by a panel of lecturers, not senate faculty. Representatives on the UCOP side questioned how this new mechanism will work, so we can anticipate they will have a counter offer. But our goal will be to win the recognition of our unique role at the university and have a seat at the table when it comes to enforcing the rights that go with it. 

The best part of the session by far was the moving testimony that came from members directly affected by our limited protections in the current contract. Table Team members Virginia Espino, a lecturer in Chicano/a and Central American Studies at UCLA, testified about how folks working in ethnic studies programs need to be protected because the subject matter of their programs is inherently politicized. We were grateful to be joined by UCI lecturer Brook Haley, who has been subject to intimidation, discipline, and arrest for his activism, as well as UC Berkeley lecturer Peyrin Kao, who was disciplined by the administration there for undertaking a hunger strike protest outside of his working hours and away from the classroom. Lecturers from UCLA who were disciplined for protecting their students at the Palestine Solidarity encampment also shared their experiences, adding further weight to our proposals. These are just a few of the many cases in which our new article would have provided important protections, underscoring the importance of the changes we’re working to negotiate.

Read our proposal here

Progress on open bargaining and Zoom sessions

In addition to the main action, here’s where things stood before Thursday. The table team first sat down with UCOP on February 19th for our pre-bargaining meeting, and the process is now in full swing. We began with a long back and forth about ground rules that is still unresolved, but we’ve already made some big wins. First and foremost, we have an agreement that our meetings will be big and open to all observers. Not just unit 18 members, but anyone in the community that we choose to admit. UCOP has pushed for closed and opaque bargaining at every other negotiating table over the last several years, including with our K-12 teacher contracts, U17 librarians, and even UAW. Not only are community members able to join, but student journalists working for the newspapers, radio stations, and other campus media are welcome. UCOP denied access to the media in our last contract negotiations. 

The biggest win of all is that we have both zoom and in-person bargaining sessions happening across the state. Many other unions at the UC for the last several years have been forced into in-person only bargaining. We told the UC labor coalition about our ability to bargain on zoom, and everyone else wants that option too! It’s something that AFSCME, UPTE, and UAW all wanted, but were unable to win. This means we not only will see everyone in person at each campus, but every other session will be open to all of us when we bargain over Zoom. We also won a minimum zoom room size of 500 people, meaning that we can absolutely pack the virtual every time if we want.

Beyond that, we’ve already made some good progress towards winning some important changes to the contract itself. We met at UCLA on March 19th, where the first concrete proposals were passed. UCOP passed a few articles (Article 13 – Travel, Article 29 – Academic Calendars, and Article 36 – Past Practice Not Covered by Agreement) that they want to keep current contract language on. They also passed some proposed changes to article 37 – Waiver, and article 6 – academic year appointments. Our Unit 18 Table Team will be reviewing these proposals carefully.

Next Bargaining: April 9 on Zoom

Our next bargaining session will be on April 9th on Zoom. We’ll likely be receiving new proposals from the UC, and hopefully finalizing the discussion of ground rules. We want to take advantage of our 500 person capacity and pack that zoom room! If you haven’t already, RSVP here.

You can join our community room early to ask questions about what’s happening, get access to our community WhatsApp chat, share your ideas about how to respond, and talk to other lecturers across the state affected by these issues. We’ll see you there! 

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)