Non-tenure track faculty teach a growing share of courses at University of California campuses, including UCLA. Despite their vital role in university teaching, lecturers have very little job security and have to fight for every benefit they get. UC lecturers have been negotiating with the university administration for several months with very little progress, and
Lecturers at UCLA and across the UC system contribute to our students’ learning and overall college experience, as well as to the teaching excellence of this University. Lecturers (also known as non-senate or contingent faculty) teach at least one-third of undergraduate credit hours, and contribute significantly to their departments and generally to the vitality of the campus. AAUP supports lecturers and their union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), in their current efforts to improve: (1) salaries and benefits reflective of expertise and cost of living; (2) timely notification of hiring and course assignments; (3) full-time, year-long, multi-year appointments; (4)…
AFSCME 3299 announced a one-day job action on November 13, 2019 for both its service and patient care units. The union has been in negotiations with the UC for more than two years, and recently filed complaints about university outsourcing of service work. The California Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) issued its own complaint to
Henry Reichman on the future of academic freedom, May 20, 12 noon.
Campus workers affiliated with AFSCME local 3299 and UPTE-CWA local 9119 voted overwhelmingly to authorize strikes at the University of California after bargaining stalled. After the vote, AFSCME announced that members in several bargaining units would strike on October 23, 24, and 25. UPTE then announced its members would strike on the same dates. Last
In a recent bargaining session with unionized librarians, UC administrators rejected the a proposal to recognize academic freedom for librarians. According to UC-AFT, negotiators for the university argued that academic freedom is “not a good fit” for librarians and claimed to have consulted Senate faculty on the topic. Quite the opposite is true, and faculty
Service and patient care workers across all University of California campuses have announced a three-day strike, May 7-9, 2018. Negotiations between AFSCME local 3299 and the UC reached an impasse after more than a year of negotiation. The university then imposed its “last, best offer,” which the union says included cuts to pay and benefits.
The recent mass shooting of seventeen students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has refocused efforts to stem the epidemic of gun violence plaguing the nation. This time the effort has been initiated and led by the surviving students, supported by their teachers, parents, and students across the country. The American Association of University Professors salutes these brave and eloquent young people. Gun violence is not a problem limited to high schools. Colleges and universities have been sites of mass shootings since 1966, when sixteen people died and thirty-one were injured at the University of Texas…
Universities have become increasingly corporatized, and the significant expansion of university administration has seriously eroded faculty authority to control or make effective recommendations about university policy. That is one of the central arguments in an amicus brief submitted by the AAUP urging the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to uphold the National Labor Relation Board’s determination that non-tenure-track faculty at the University of Southern California are not managerial employees and are therefore eligible to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act. This case arose when Service Employees International Union filed a petition to represent non-tenure-track full-time and…
OPEN LETTER TO AAUP MEMBERS: Free speech on campuses has become a focus of contentious debate and increased media scrutiny. Campus communities—including administrators, faculty, and students—generally embrace the concept of free speech yet lack a clear consensus about its limits. The AAUP invites proposals for presentations at our June 14–17 annual conference that offer nuanced articulations of the concept of free speech in the context of higher education. Submissions are due by January 14. Presentations might explore competing claims about who has free speech rights and how far they extend; free speech and its relation to academic freedom; the politicization of free speech…
