UC - AFT NEWS

• UC-AFT Officer Candidate statements
• UCB Extension English Language Program to close
• Lecturers Bargaining archives
• UC Administrators' Compensation Packages
• Spring, 2004 UC-AFT Perspective (1 MB pdf)
• Roddy and Klar meet with Dynes

DAVIS, CA - Lecturers at the University of California, Davis (UCD), went on strike today to protest the administration's unilateral change in the way non-tenure-track faculty are hired and fired. Under the administration's policy of terminating lecturers after six years of service, seven lecturers in five departments will lose their jobs, including a winner of the Excellence in Teaching Award, Victor Squitieri.

By more than a three to one margin, with 70% of the membership voting, UC-AFT Local 2023 members voted to authorize the strike action. Many lecturers will cancel their classes on those days and walk the picket lines with their colleagues and supporters, students, other UCD staff, and community members.

Last Thursday, during a noontime demonstration, students supporting lecturers led more than 100 people to Dean Elizabeth Langland's office.

Students called the event a "March on the Death Star," invoking both the death of professional teaching and the Humanities/Social Science building's ominous architecture.
Another march took place today, and another is planned for this Thursday.

The job action comes after more than a year of widespread campus protest, including a petition drive in which nearly 2,000 UCD undergraduates signaled their adamant opposition to the terminations. Students meeting with the Deans have been told that long-term lecturers must be let go so that the campus can hire more researchers -- and attract more graduate students to do the teaching.

"The University is treating excellent teaching with contempt," said Kevin Roddy, a UCD faculty member helping to spearhead the strike. "The current plan to downgrade the University's upper-division English composition program makes no sense. Replacing continuing lecturers with rotating temps will damage the quality of instruction in what is now an excellent writing program."

Even as the current Lecturers are losing their jobs, their Departments are advertising for new lecturers to replace them. The administration's stated goal in terminating these lecturers is to generate savings to hire tenured ("senate") research faculty. However, senate faculty currently do not teach composition and carry 3 fewer courses per year than do the lecturers (4 vs. 7). "The very small savings from the difference between continuing and temporary lecturers' salaries will not begin to justify the damage to the composition faculty's morale and to the quality of instruction in the program," said Roddy, who is also the lecturers' union representative at Davis.

In reality the University is adopting a policy of replacing experienced, first-rate teaching faculty with rotating temporary lecturers. Many of the current long-term lecturers hold doctorates from prestigious universities. Many have strong publication records and enviable professional standing, and many have taught most or all of their careers at UC. Under the new policy the University will not be able to recruit the same quality of teaching faculty because of the temporary nature of the new positions. This will undermine the quality of education and the relationships between student and teacher.

However, undergraduates inevitably will face larger classes and less-experienced instructors. As UCD junior Kenny McCanless points out, "Dean Langland has deemed upper-division classes taught by lecturers to be an 'embarrassment.' I am extremely embarrassed that my deans would allow quality teaching to become a low priority, and fail to look out for the needs of their students."

The UC-AFT represents nearly 4,000 lecturers and librarians throughout the UC system and is affiliated with the California Federation of Teachers (CFT). The CFT represents over 100,000 teachers and school employees in California, from early education through the university level.