UC-AFT is currently bargaining with the
UC administration over the terms and conditions of the contract regulating over
3,500 lecturers in the university system. The majority of these lecturers
are in their first six years, and according to the present contract, there is
no obligation to review these faculty members. In fact, in some programs,
none of the faculty teaching the majority of required undergraduate courses
have been reviewed in ten years. The people representing the university
at the table argue that lecturers should have no expectation of having a career
until they pass their sixth-year review, and so it is not necessary to review
their teaching and service before they come up for a continuing
appointment. Since most lecturers never make it to their sixth year, this
means that the university does not think it is important to judge the quality
of instruction for the majority of lecturers.
When we have pushed the people at the
bargaining table to explain why they do not think teachers should be evaluated,
we are told that it would be too time consuming and costly to do the
reviews. In other words, instructional quality is such a low priority
that the administration does not think it is worth the time or effort to review
the effectiveness of instructors.
As a union, we have been placed in the
strange position of demanding that the university review our members as we
insist on a high bar for quality instruction. We have also been forced to
develop a contract that can protect against the constant turnover of
lecturers. Since the administration does not think that these teachers in
their first six years should have any expectation of continued employment,
departments and programs have been able to replace experienced faculty with
inexperienced teachers to prevent expert lecturers from gaining any job
security.
The university also insists that
lecturers working less than half time should have no benefits including social
security and pension. In fact, a majority of lecturers are now
hired on a quarterly basis and have no way of knowing when and how much they
will be teaching in the future. Some of the quarterly appointments have
been teaching in the UC for over twenty years and still they have no job
security.
We are proud that our contract is one of
the best in the country for non-tenure-track faculty, but there are still
majors problems with the way the administration views and treats the people
teaching more than 35% of the undergraduate student credit hours and a majority
of the required undergraduate courses. We need a contract that will protect the
quality of undergraduate instruction by evaluating lecturers in an effective manner.
