The University Council – American Federation of Teachers began its contract negotiations with the UC system with a small rally and bake sale Feb. 19. A new contract would govern the more than 7,000 teaching faculty members and librarians UC-AFT represents throughout the UC system.<\/p>\n
During the rally at Wurster Hall, UC-AFT members assembled to observe the prebargaining process, which defines the ground rules of future negotiations, according to David Skolnick, the co-Chair for the Bay Area chapter of UC-AFT and a College Writing Programs lecturer.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt a baseline, we\u2019re defending what we have, because the university is going to be using all the mandates coming from the federal government as an excuse to try to claw back what we\u2019ve already won,\u201d Skolnick said.<\/p>\n
Skolnick noted the union\u2019s focus going into negotiations on job security, healthcare, workload and pay.<\/p>\n
He also cited the presence of AI, technology and surveillance in the classroom as issues that would be discussed in bargaining.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re hoping to make more clarity and also provide more language that ensures job security,\u201d said Tommy Tran, a member of the UC-AFT bargaining team for UC Merced and lecturer at UC Merced. \u201cGiven the current climate, job security is a very serious problem, especially for academic appointees in the UC system. So we\u2019re hoping to make a more secure contract.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tran alleged the existing contract is vague and allows the UC system to \u201crenege on their promises to faculty\u201d and \u201creduce work hours arbitrarily.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the prebargaining began, UC-AFT members set up a bake sale outside of California Hall.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the goals is to publicize what\u2019s going on now with the UC-AFT,\u201d Skolnick said.<\/p>\n
Half of the proceeds were donated to Minneapolis food organizations while the other half went to the union\u2019s hardship fund, according to Skolnick.<\/p>\n
The rally was one of many across the state on UC campuses Feb. 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The University Council – American Federation of Teachers began its contract negotiations with the UC system with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[38336,89160,89159,143,145,144,89161,89158,7346],"class_list":{"0":"post-189966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-california-hall","9":"tag-college-writing-programs","10":"tag-david-skolnick","11":"tag-oakland","12":"tag-oakland-headlines","13":"tag-oakland-news","14":"tag-tommy-tran","15":"tag-uc-american-federation-of-teachers","16":"tag-uc-merced"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}