UC Lecturers’ New Contract: Higher Salaries But No Job Security
by John B. DiRossi
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA has reached a tentative agreement with the University Council-American Federation of Teachers (UC-AFT) union for a contract extension for lecturers, UC officials announced last week.
The agreement, which was announced June 29th and reached after only eight weeks of negotiation, extends the contract for the UC’s 2,500 lecturers through 2010.
Provisions of the agreement include salary range increases and continued eligibility for merit-based pay increases. The new contract will also establish additional measures assisting lecturers seeking reappointment or pursuing a continuing appointment.
Salary increases are in accordance with the UC’s Higher Education Compact with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said Noel Van Nyhuis, a spokesman for the UC Office of the President.
Pending approval of the state budget, UC-AFT estimates that UC lecturers will see salary increases of two percent per year for the next three years. These increases will be on par with those for tenured UC faculty.
Mike Rotkin, chief negotiator for UC-AFT and a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz, said that while the union didn’t accomplish all they had hoped with the new contract, they were pleasantly surprised with the results given the current economic climate.
At the close of negotiations, the length of contracts for lecturers is the only major item UC-AFT expressed dissatisfaction with.
The union was hoping to get the UC to agree to formally require two-year contracts for lecturers, instead of the current one-year or quarterly contracts, which allow lecturers little time to plan ahead. The UC agreed only to make a recommendation to its universities, leaving contract details up to the hiring academic departments.
Various issues were raised by both sides during the negotiations, including layoff procedure and duration of employment by the UC, and appointments and merit review on the side of UC-AFT.
Acquiring acceptable systems of review for lecturers was one of the more difficult items for UC-AFT to negotiate, as the UC is very reluctant to give continuing appointments to lecturers, said Kevin Roddy, vice-president of legislation for UC-AFT. Roddy said. Only 25 percent of UC lecturers have a post-six year continuing appointment.
“The UC still thinks of lecturers as temporary employees,” Roddy said.
Under the old contract, any pre-six year lecturer could be denied reappointment at any time without any review taking place, leaving the union with no way to ascertain the fairness of the release, Roddy said.
The UC-AFT bargaining team is recommending that its members vote to accept the contract, and the UC has expressed their satisfaction with the negotiations as well.
“We are very pleased to have reached an agreement that we believe is fair, recognizes their contributions and offers them strengthened advancement opportunities,” said Howard Pripas, UC director of labor relations, in a statement. “We are especially pleased that we were able to reach an agreement so swiftly and peacefully.”
UC negotiations with UC-AFT haven’t always gone so smoothly. In 2002, after three years without a contract and after reaching a bargaining impasse with the UC, picketing UC lecturers and supportive tenured professors shut down classes at several UC campuses during a two-day strike.
Protesters’ major complaint in 2002 was the lack of job security.
The possibility of another strike wasn’t a factor in the negotiations, Van Nyhuis said.
Both parties will renegotiate salary, workload, and other specific issues in the contract in October 2006.
