UC Santa Cruz graduate student workers are trying to negotiate with UCSC for fair wages for their critical work in teaching students. University officials, negotiators, and the Office of the President have been adversarial and punitive, not recognizing the importance of these young teachers to the teaching mission of the UCSC and the larger UC system or the need for a COLA to support the rising living costs faces by these teachers.

Without quality teachers there can be no quality teaching. Without a COLA, there can be no quality teachers.

Please join me in supporting these teachers in their quest for fair and equitable compensation.

David Teplow

President, UCLA-AAUP

To the UC Community:

At the UCSC General Assembly on February 21, COLA wildcat strikers voted overwhelmingly to continue to withhold Fall grades beyond Janet Napolitano’s midnight deadline.

At least 85 UCSC graduate student workers, and very likely more, have refused to submit to Napolitano and INC Kletzer’s threat to revoke Spring appointments and block future ones. Nearly 20% of these workers are international graduate students, who now face the risk of de facto deportation.

We feel the collective strength of our fellow workers’ commitment to act decisively in solidarity. We know of pledges to withhold winter grades and commence teaching strikes on multiple UC campuses, and a UCSC, in the event of terminations at UCSC.

We are now past Napolitano’s firing deadline. We hereby consider ourselves terminated from our employment.

We consider these pledges active and in effect until we receive notice that we are reinstated to Spring appointments.

We further call on our graduate worker comrades to strike not only in solidarity with us, but also for their own COLA demands. Our labor stoppages have taught us that the power is on our side to move towards the COLA we need. Strike with us to win it for all of us.

Signed,

Striking graduate student workers at UCSC

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) smaller class size; (5) decreased workload to allow more time for class preparation and student interaction; and (6) equal access to course schedules.

AAUP urges its members to support UCLA lecturers. For more information, contact Karl Lisovsky, President, UCLA AFT or the University Council-AFT.

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.

• Between 1976 and 2015, the number of full-time executives and managers in higher education grew by 140 percent.
• Conversely, the number of full-time and tenure-track positions has plummeted, with lower-wage non-tenure track faculty making up 70 percent of all faculty positions. This is nearly the reverse of the proportions in 1969, when 78 percent of faculty positions were tenured and tenure-track.
• From 1976 to 2011, the number of full-time non-faculty professional positions increased by 366 percent overall, with growth of 558 percent in that category at private institutions.

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 before, during, and after the 2016 presidential election;
• free speech and the problem of hate speech, racism, or white supremacy;
• rights and obligations regarding controversial outside speakers;
• campuses and their communities as sites of protest and counterprotest;
• social media controversies and their consequences;
• media coverage of free speech on campuses;
• free speech and faculty on contingent appointments;
• free speech and the right to organize in unions;
• the history and legacy of the 1960s free speech movement; or
• the future of free speech on campuses.

Presentations on other topics of interest to a diverse, multidisciplinary higher education audience are welcome. We encourage proposals that raise questions, engage conference participants in discussion, and foster dialogue. See additional details and submit your proposal at https://www.aaup.org/CFP-2018.

Best wishes,
Gwendolyn Bradley
Director of External Relations

PS: If you’re interested in writing an article on the topic of free speech for the AAUP’s online Journal of Academic Freedom, take a look at our call for papers, with submissions due by January 31.

National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom

Members of the UCLA Emerti Association and the UCLA Retirees’ Association were notified today that a budget agenda item that could affect all present and past UCLA employees was being considered.

The UCLA chapter of the AAUP urges all members to read the information below and to make your opinions known to the Regents.

The UCLA Emeriti Association and the UCLA Retirees’ Association recently became aware that the Regents are considering an action that could significantly increase health care premiums for UC emeriti and retirees. Retiree, emeriti, faculty and staff organizations have quickly mobilized to respond to this issue but further action is required and your help is needed.

UCLA Professor Emeritus Dan Mitchell, past president of the UCLA Emeriti Association, noticed an item on the July 12, 2017 agenda for the Regents Finance and Capital Strategies Committee to “Rescind the 70 percent Floor for the University’s Aggregate Annual Contribution to the Retiree Health Benefit Program.”

Through swift action, retiree, faculty and staff representatives from across the UC campuses objected vociferously to this agenda item, which was added without any discussion or prior notice. The Council of UC Retiree Associations (CUCRA), The Council of UC Emeriti Associations (CUCEA), the UC system-wide Academic Council and the retiree and emeriti associations on several UC campuses, including our own, joined in the effort to protest this action item.

This prompt outcry resulted in the removal of the item from the July meeting agenda and a rescheduling to September to allow more time for consultation and analysis.

As background, in 2011, UC paid, on average, 86 percent of retiree health care premiums. At that time, in an effort to contain costs for retiree health care and after much discussion and consultation with staff, faculty and retiree representatives, the Regents approved a plan that gradually reduced that amount over several years to a floor of 70 percent. That current cost-sharing formula, whereby the University pays an average of 70 percent of retiree healthcare premiums and retirees pay 30 percent, is in place today.

This action is an erosion of the University’s long history and tradition of shared governance whereby major policy decisions such as this are made only after representatives of the affected parties have been involved in discussions and given the opportunity to analyze the effect of such a change.

You are encouraged to action by emailing or writing to the Regents about this matter.

We will continue to work with our colleagues at all of the UC campuses to respond to this issue, but many voices may be more effective than just a few. A “letter writing” campaign may make the Regents realize the importance of this matter to all of us.

If you contact the Regents, consider the following talking points (use your own words):

• Employees in the University of California system have regularly worked for “under-market” compensation, based on their belief that their pension and health benefits would be there for them in retirement.

• The 70 percent floor for UC’s contribution to emeriti health benefits was adopted to provide some stability to emeriti and retiree health care costs.
Except for the annual COLA, retirees and emeriti have no way to increase their income to fund the increased cost of healthcare.

• Although emeriti and retiree health benefits have never been guaranteed and are not “vested” in the same way pension benefits are, UC needs to maintain the 70% floor of healthcare benefits because of their importance for recruiting and retaining faculty and staff.

• Removing the 70 percent floor could be the first step toward eliminating this key retirement benefit that retirees and emeriti counted on during their long careers at the University.

Whom to contact:

By email (use the subject line “Retiree health care–rescinding of 70% floor): regentsoffice@ucop.edu

By mail: Office of the Secretary and Chief of Staff to the Regents

1111 Franklin St., 12th floorOakland, CA 94607

Oakland, CA 94607

The AAUP submitted an amicus brief on 7-12-17  in support of faculty members who have been subjected to intrusive public records requests for e-mails related to their climate-science research. The AAUP brief, filed with the Arizona Court of Appeals in the case Energy & Environment Legal Institute v. Arizona Board of Regents, argues that the academic freedom to conduct research is essential to a vital university system and to the common good, and that this warrants protecting certain research records from disclosure.

The case arose from an extensive public records request that was made by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, which uses public records requests in a campaign against climate science. In similar past cases, AAUP briefs have been key to court decisions rejecting the requests.

In this case, E & E submitted public records requests that targeted two University of Arizona faculty members, climate researchers Malcolm Hughes and Jonathan Overpeck. E & E counsel said the suit was intended to “put false science on trial” and E & E vowed to “keep peppering universities around the country with similar requests under state open records laws.”

The current brief urges courts to “consider the best interests of the state to maintain a free and vital university system, which depends on the protection of academic freedom to engage in the free and open scientific debate necessary to create high-quality academic research. Where the requests seek prepublication communications and other unpublished academic research materials, as in the case at bar, compelled disclosure would have a severe chilling effect on intellectual debate among researchers and scientists.”

The title of this post is not mine. It’s NPR’s. It is but one of a huge number of media reports decrying the reckless, thoughtless, catastrophic budget proposed by the Trump administration. This budget proposes cuts that would have far-reaching damaging effects to almost all sectors of our society, except of course to the business sector. Other media reports concerning the Trump budget include:

The Washington Post: “Trump budget seeks huge cuts to science and medical research, disease prevention.”

The New York Times: “Trump’s Budget Cuts Deeply Into Medicaid and Anti-Poverty Efforts.”

ABCNews: “Trump’s budget cuts funding for Superfund sites, clean air and water programs.”

The academic community must work together with all concerned Americans who value knowledge, truth (not “alternative truth”), thoughtfulness, health, and concern for humanity and the earth to make its voice heard where it will do the best, namely in Congress. Please contact your representatives and senators and let them know how steadfast you are in opposition to the Trump budget.

The Coalition for Life Sciences has set up an automated system enabling those concerned about the cuts to science funding to express themselves.

Regardless of your field, please do make your voices heard. The consequences of not doing so endanger academia as never before.