Weekly Commentary 9/23/19 #125: Whom do UC Negotiators Represent?

by | Sep 23, 2019 | Commentary, Weekly

The University of California is a public institution, accountable to its students, faculty, and the larger community. This is part of the reason that it is so important that union negotiations are public too. Last week, the UC-AFT, which represents lecturers and librarians in the UC system, engaged in negotiations with the University of California labor relations representatives on the Berkeley campus–the 6th bargaining session in what promises to be a long series.  In attendance as observers were undergraduate and graduate students, lecturers, librarians, faculty, BFA representatives, and members of the Academic Senate leadership. We were all there to see how our University negotiates on our behalf with the lecturers who, in terms of student credit hours, perform more than 40% of the teaching on campus.

The negotiating session opened with a set of statements by campus lecturers which put on display the incredible quality of the work they do every day. The negotiators’ responses, on the other hand, demonstrated their fundamental ignorance about what teaching and learning looks like on the Berkeley campus, or even how academia works at all. UC labor relations staff believe they speak for the University in offering as little as possible to non-Senate faculty. But to the contrary, the work conditions of the lecturers matter to us as faculty every day. We teach the same students, and if lecturers are better supported to do that work well, we all benefit. That is why it is so essential that so many members of the campus community are there to observe negotiations, demonstrating to both sides that lecturer work conditions matter to all of us.

We urge all BFA members to pay attention to these proceedings and support lecturers. So far, it appears that UC negotiators are not taking seriously the lecturers’ contract proposals for improving their working conditions and, by extension, their ability to serve students. We wonder: on whose behalf are the UC negotiators bargaining?   Keeping more than a third of our teaching faculty in precarious working conditions does not benefit any department’s teaching mission.

Leslie Salzinger and Paul Fine from the Board of the Berkeley Faculty Association