An Independent Senate Faculty Union
An Independent Senate Faculty Union
The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education is trying to prevent the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. The SCFA supports this campaign and encourages colleagues to call our senators (phone numbers below). As well, please forward…
On Thursday, January 26, the UC Regents will consider and likely approve their budget for the University for 2017-2018. It and the Governor’s budget, to which it is closely tied, perpetuate decades of failed privatization and persistent under funding of…
October 1, 2016 The Council of UC Faculty Associations has developed important criteria for Chancellor searches in light of the vacancies at the Davis and Berkeley campuses. ************************* A University of California Chancellor must be committed both to broad access…
September 7, 2016 As you may already know, three days ago, President of Long Island University Kimberly R. Cline and the Board of Trustees locked out the faculty of the LIU Brooklyn Campus. After contract negotiations on a new contract…
This issue was voted on by the Regents on July 20, 2016, and passed unanimously. We fear that this change will make it more difficult for us all to monitor policies that affect students, faculty, staff and the public. Regents…
We urge you to participate in the UCSC Academic Senate Meeting where the pension proposals will be discussed. Friday, February 12, at 2:30 in the Stevenson Events Center. The University of California is currently considering introducing a new pension plan…
If you are concerned about a further erosion of compensation at UC, the November 5, 2015 communication from CUCFA explains what you can do to make your views known. We urge you to follow the link for an explanation of…
October 26, 2015 Daniel Hare, Chair Academic Senate Dear Chair Hare: Enclosed is a letter signed by 33 UCSC faculty concerning the Proposed Revised Presidential Policy on Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment. We are taking the unusual step of submitting…
The Council of University of California Faculty Associations and the American Association of University Professors write to protest the following remarks made by University of California Regent Richard Blum and then supported by Regent Hadi Makarechian during the discussion of…
Professor Celeste Langan spoke on behalf of the UC Faculty Associations at the July 22, 2015 UC Regents meeting during the public comment period. Below is a copy of her full comments: *********************** As co-Chair of the Berkeley Faculty Association…
The Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) has released the following statement to help inform faculty about the terms and consequences of the revised budget. The May Revise As the Legislature and Governor enter the end game for…
This past February, the Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) became aware that the UC administration was considering plans to restructure the health benefits for all University of California employees. At a meeting of the UC Senate Faculty Welfare Committee, John Stobo, Vice…
Deeply concerned about the effects of UC-systemwide and campus budget cuts since 2008, in winter 2014, the Santa Cruz Faculty Association sponsored a program of Small Grants for Creative Response to the Crisis in Education. One of the awards was granted to conduct a Budget Cut Impact Survey to assess and evaluate the particular impacts of those cuts on faculty teaching and morale at UCSC. This report contains the results of that survey. These results seem particularly timely given current discussions about budget cuts we may be facing again in the near future, and the impacts those would likely have.
March 19, 2015 Dear UCSC Faculty member, As you are aware, recent changes in UC’s health care policies and benefits, and glitches in its contract with Blue Cross, have affected many of our faculty, instructors and staff. SCFA has been…
Santa Cruz Sentinel on March 7, 2015 by Christopher Connery, professor of world literature and cultural studies at UC Santa Cruz I was arrested for blocking traffic at the intersection of Highway 1 and 17. I was later tried and…
What follows is a letter from UCSC Senate faculty to the Senate Executive Committee on the topic of the administration's plan to allocate 14 FTE to a Silicon Valley campus. If you would like to add your signature, please do so in the form that follows. We would like to send the letter to the Senate Executive Committee by March 13, 2015.
As your colleagues in the Academic Senate, we write to you of our concern regarding the administration’s stated intention to divert 14 FTE to a planned Silicon Valley campus which, we fear, will erode UCSC’s ability to fulfill its core mission and will have negative implications for both undergraduate and graduate education at UCSC.
A year ago Colleen Lye and James Vernon, co-chairs of the Berkeley Faculty Association, drew the attention of faculty across the ten campuses of the University of California to the continuing degradation of their pensions, benefits and salaries. This analysis has recently been confirmed by UCOP’s own study of total remuneration. The executive summary of this document contains the following depressing bullet points:
Dear Colleagues, As most of you are doubtless aware, the recent breakdown in talks between Blue Shield and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (Sutter) could have enormous and negative consequences for UC employees, many of whom will lose coverage or…
On January 12, 2015, The SCFA sent the following letter to UC President Janet Napolitano and also sent copies of the letter to half a dozen UC officers. Dwaine B. Duckett, UCOP Vice President of Human Resources responded with a…
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) today announced that they have agreed to work together as partner organizations in “defense and promotion of academic freedom, shared university governance, and…
Pasted below is the text of a union coalition letter that was sent today, December 15, 2014, to Governor Brown and other state leaders, as well as the leaders of the three higher ed systems. Dear Governor Brown: The escalating…
The following letter was sent to the APPU (Puerto Rican Association of University Professors) in support of their campaign to become a faculty union recognized as a legitimate agent for collective bargaining at the University of Puerto Rico. Our endorsement…
Below please find a letter that The Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA), the systemwide organization of which the UCSC Faculty Association is a member, sent today to President Napolitano and the UC Regents regarding their recent proposal to raise…
The SCFA’s work in the past year has, as in recent years, been largely conditioned by the ongoing funding crisis in public education in California, and its ongoing consequences for faculty research, teaching, and welfare. Online education, which was once…
On Friday Sept. 5, Chancellor Dirks of UC Berkeley circulated an open statement to his campus community that sought to define the limits of appropriate debate at Berkeley. Issued as the campus approaches the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement,…
On July 6, CUCFA sent the following letter to UC President Janet Napolitano in response to the June 26, 2014 announcement that she has rescinded a policy that barred the university from investing directly in companies that commercialize technology that…
Dear Colleagues, For many of us, our teaching assistants are central to our pedagogy. They work the most closely with our students, and are most closely involved with our students’ individual progress. Our universities depend on them in many ways.…
The SCFA Bargaining Committee prepared this letter in response to the University’s proposed Campus Online Education Contract. The proposal can be found HERE. Renee Mayne Director of Labor Relations, UCSC Thank you very much for the proposed ILTI agreement,…
Sharp New Video released by Campaign for the Future of Higher Education Questions False Promises of Online Education Industry. “Online Ed: Teaching Millions or Making Millions?” at Online Ed: Teaching Millions or Making Millions? The video, “Online Education: Teaching Millions…
The following letter was sent to EVC Galloway and Chancellor Blumenthal today, April 2, 2014, on the first of the two day strike by UAW 2865. UAW members, including union leader Josh Brahinsky, were arrested on the picket line in Santa Cruz this morning. As many as twenty undergraduate supporters were arrested as well. The union called for a peaceful, legal strike in protest of management’s unlawful intimidation of student-workers.
We encourage you to read the letter below from the graduate student union (UAW 2865) organizing committee, with details of the strike the union is planning for April 2 and 3. The letter includes suggestions about what faculty can do to support the strike. The Board of the Faculty Association supports our graduate students' demands. We understand that an action of this kind during the first week of class is an inconvenience for faculty and for students, but feel that by supporting the graduate students at this time we can help them in their struggle for the fair and just working conditions that are the necessary conditions for our collective educational mission.
The SCFA wrote this response to the office of Labor Relations letter in which the University provides us with a revised Coursera contract. We were surprised by the language in this contract. We had hoped that the University’s new contract would address the issues that we have all raised. We were under the impression that there was some consensus between us about fundamental issues. The contract between UCSC and Coursera is not inappropriate. The issue is the contract that faculty are asked to sign with the University.
We would like to bring to your attention an Op-Ed written by Colleen Lye and James Vernon, Co-Chairs of the Berkeley Faculty Association, on behalf of its Board. The article appeared in the Daily Cal on March 4, 2014, and…
The SCFA would like to congratulate you and Labor Relations for settling the grievances made by the Graduate Students' Union, the UAW. We support fair contracts for all UC unions, because the academic mission of the university depends on all of our labor.
Please join me in congratulating our AFSCME colleagues for the successful conclusion of their negotiations, which as you all have heard has averted next week's planned strike. This is an important victory for our workers.
Our TA union (Student-Workers Union UAW 2865) is, however, proceeding with its plans for a strike on March 5, 2014. TA's cannot of course be penalized for participating in a legal strike, so please make the necessary adjustments due to TA's absence from work on that day. We at the Faculty Association encourage you to familiarize yourselves with the TA union's issues, and to do what you can to support their strike. The TA union is currently without a contract with the University of California, which limits the union's ability to pursue grievances by other means.
The Santa Cruz Faculty Association is sending out this Budget Cut Impact Survey to UCSC faculty so that we may assess the particular impacts of recent University of California budget cuts for faculty on our campus. The SCFA notes that since acute UC budget cuts began in Fall 2008, there has been no study of their impact on faculty, i.e. on our teaching, service, research, and morale. Nor have studies been done on how these impacts affect us similarly or differently across divisions, fields, and ranks. Our goal through the survey is to generate this data, and to use it to better represent faculty in our advocacy around the cuts. This project was sponsored by the Creative Responses to Crisis in Education: An SCFA Small Grants Program.
The Berkeley Faculty Association has developed a petition that will be delivered to Peter Chester, Director, UCOP Labor Relations and Janet Napolitano, President, University of California. The petition states “Faculty support UAW contract negotiations with the University of California for…
The SCFA Board sent this statement to the UC Office of the President as well as to local administrators to show their support for the UAW contract negotiations.
Faculty must defend their rights to their intellectual property, which are increasingly under threat, according to a draft report released Thursday by the American Association of University Professors…