The lecturers’ union, UC-AFT, has just notified UC management that they plan to strike this week, Wednesday, November 17 and Thursday, November 18, in response to the administration’s bad faith bargaining and unfair labor practices. There are negotiations scheduled for Monday, but the UC administration’s recent refusal to participate in good faith in the statutory impasse procedures and to bargain in good faith over paid family leaves, in addition to numerous other unfair labor practices over the last 20 months of bargaining, suggest it’s unlikely that the UC administration will take the actions needed to avert this legal strike.
With this two-day unfair labor practices strike before us, Senate faculty have some decisions to make and we hope that this email provides you with information that will assist you.
The Faculty Associations value the labor of our lecturer colleagues and stands in solidarity with them. We urge you to learn how you can best support them in their struggle for a fair contract.
The lecturers are asking everyone on campus to sign up for picket line shifts. Walking the picket line is a great way to show solidarity and to make it clear that we know that lecturers’ working conditions are our students’ learning conditions. It is vitally important that the UC administration see that the different constituencies on campus support the lecturers.
In addition to taking a shift on the picket line, there are other ways to support the lecturers. Hundreds of Senate faculty across the system—including at UCI—have pledged to engage in their HEERA-protected right to respect UC-AFT’s picket line. (If you haven’t signed and would like to, click here). Respecting a picket line is an act of solidarity by an individual employee in support of other employees on strike; it is an individual act of conscience in answer to the lecturers’ call for solidarity. UC-AFT has stated that respecting their picket means not coming to campus except to join the picket line, not teaching in person or online, not responding to work-related emails, and not conducting UC-related service duties. This FAQ has answers to questions you may have about faculty rights to respect their picket line.
Additional ways to support our lecturer colleagues include donating to their strike fund and calling or emailing UC President Drake and asking him to tell UC’s negotiators to negotiate in good faith.
If you want to learn more about the general context of the contract negotiations between UC-AFT and the UC administration over the last two years and about what UC-AFT is demanding and why, please see UC-AFT’s bargaining website and this Daily Cal op-ed written by our colleagues in the Berkeley Faculty Association and their student allies.
In solidarity,
The SDFA Executive Board