To join the BFA, just fill out and mail in a membership form.
(We know that snail mail is antiquated, but joining means a payroll deduction, which requires a signature)
Mail completed form to:
BFA/AAUP Coalition
15 Shattuck Sq., Suite 200
Berkeley, CA 94704-1151
Dues will automatically be deducted from your paychecks.
Monthly dues:
$15/month for Assistant Professors and Acting Profs of Law
$20.00/month for Associate Professors
$28.00/month for Full Professors
Joining BFA confers membership in the AAUP
Why you should join the BFA
1. Unlike the various bodies of the UC Senate, the BFA can undertake a singular advocacy mission. The Senate is legally barred from political organizing, but the BFA, constituted as an independent employee member organization, is free to engage in political outreach, as well as to enter into direct negotiations with administration on behalf of faculty.
2. The BFA is a dues-paying organization, whose members provide it with a ready budget. This means it has funding to stage the events and actions that effective faculty advocacy requires. For example, we can make the campus aware of the significant threats to the viability of our conditions of work. We can rally opposition to changes that undermine the public mission of the university and its long-held standards of excellence. And we can mount campaigns in favor of legislation that addresses those larger problems of state government that have lead to increasingly dire financial conditions for higher education in the state.
3. The BFA is a member organization of the American Association of University Professors, with access to AAUP offices and staff for advice and support. As such, it is a faculty organization dedicated to issues of academic freedom, equity, and self-governance. It can consult with other faculty associations across the country, gain access to legal precedents and options, and inform itself about political actions undertaken elsewhere in response to budget cuts that affect faculty welfare. The AAUP can also help us draw national attention to the challenges facing UC and help us investigate violations of academic freedom.
4. The BFA can act as an advocate for and collaborate with other faculty groups on campus, including the SAVE initiative and its working groups. Like the BFA, SAVE is addressing key issues of concern to faculty (the furlough program among them) and moreover is forging strong collaborative ties with student and staff organizations concerned with the recent budget cuts. We also intend to consult and collaborate, when possible, with Senate Faculty committees and the UCOP faculty council to help achieve these goals. We also aim to work collaboratively with local and system-wide organizations to forward the interests and concerns not only of Berkeley faculty but also of colleagues from the other UC campuses, with which we share an interlocking fate.
5. The BFA is a member of the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA), which has taken an early and active role in enunciating faculty concerns and making demands for administrative transparency during this budget crisis. Our membership in this organization allows us to establish lines of communication and solidarity with parallel faculty associations on other UC campuses, to better organize system-wide demands and actions with such associations, and to participate in CUCFA’s deliberations on how best to advocate for faculty within the UC system and to implement those decision across the campuses.
6. Established under the auspices of the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act (HEERA), the BFA can constitute itself as a collective bargaining unit for faculty. In the past, like all other UC faculty associations (except that at Santa Cruz) it has declined to exercise that option. Even so, while there are currently no plans to pursue unionization as a strategy, this possibility can still be considered, if our commitment to faculty welfare and the future of UC Berkeley as the premier public university for teaching and research can be accomplished in no other way.
Please join us by becoming a member of BFA.
