Frustrated by two years of bad-faith bargaining and capricious actions by the University of California administration, the union representing 4,000 lecturers in the system announced it will strike back this fall. At an Aug. 21 press conference and pre-strike rally, the University of California Council of the American Federation of Teachers (UC-AFT) reported the results of a secret mail ballot conducted throughout the UC system. The ballot showed 88 percent of the instructors supported taking job actions, including withholding their teaching and other services.

The first action will take place at the Berkeley campus, where classes begin Aug. 26, a month earlier than the others. As a measure of the university's widespread labor difficulties, the lecturers will be joining two other employee groups--nurses and clerical workers--that are planning to strike during the first three days of the semester. Those groups are also looking for improvements in pay and working conditions--and signs that the university is willing to bargain seriously.

The UC-AFT lecturers plan to meet with their classes on Monday and Tuesday (Aug. 26-27) to let them know about the strike; they will then withhold their teaching on Wednesday, Aug. 28. Systemwide, the lecturers teach 45 percent of the classes, many of them at the freshman level. The Berkeley lecturers "don't want to undermine their obligation to serve these students," says Kevin Roddy, president of the UC-AFT.

The lecturers receive only about 50 percent of the pay that their permanent tenured or tenure-track colleagues make, although they do similar work. In addition to teaching, they advise students, write letters of recommendation, serve on committees, do research and keep up with their fields.  They are hired on annual contracts; in their sixth year, they are eligible to work under three-year renewable contracts. Recently, however, says Roddy, the university has been letting lecturers go before their six years are up, no matter how superior their skills are.

"Instead of committing themselves to hiring and retaining its best, most dedicated instructors, it uses lecturers as a pool of cheap, expendable labor," charged Celtic Studies lecturer Kathryn Klar at the Berkeley rally.

The UC-AFT has filed an unfair labor practice on behalf of the UC-Davis lecturers over the practice of letting lecturers go as they approach their six-year anniversaries. "This is a critical ULP," says Roddy, who has taught at UC-Davis for 26 years. "It shows the larger dimension of bad faith and disrespect in the way we are treated."

In the coming weeks, each UC-AFT local will decide for itself what job actions to take this fall. [Barbara McKenna]

August 23, 2002