UC - AFT NEWS

• Fall, 2004 UC-AFT Perspective (1 MB pdf)
• UC-AFT Election Candidate Statements
• Local 1474 officer election results
• UCB Extension English Language Program to close
• Lecturers Bargaining archives
• UC Administrators' Compensation Packages
• Roddy and Klar meet with Dynes

Berkeley and San Francisco Local 1474
Spring 2005 Election
Candidates' Statements

Candidate for President: Kathryn Klar, Lecturer and Acting President

Non-Senate Faculty members and Librarians are highly-trained professionals without whose skills the University of California cannot deliver on its promise of "Excellence in Education." Our union is the best way for lecturers and librarians to collectively work toward the professional recognition our training and experience entitles us to, especially as reflected tangibly in equitable and appropriate salaries, job stability, and the ability to be principal investigators for major grants.

In the coming year, I will work to maintain the excellent contract implementation record we've established, continue to build our local organization into an effective voice for both bargaining units, and, most importantly, make every effort to increase our membership numbers. The University pays attention to our concerns in proportion to how seriously we take them ourselves as demonstrated through our willingness to organize and work together, and to engage in honest dialogue with the Administration. I continue to believe that apathy and a culture of fear have no place in a University such as ours, and I will continue to speak out when necessary to bring our concerns to the University's attention.

Candidate for Secretary: Sarah Roberts

Born and raised in England, I moved to the US in 1989 to pursue a B.A. in French at Brown University, Rhode Island. After graduating in 1991, I moved to California to get a Ph.D. in French, here at UC Berkeley. I am now a lecturer in the French Department, and it’s a job I love.

I decided to get involved with our local because I’m impressed by what this union has achieved for lecturers like myself, both system-wide and locally, in the last few years: a stronger MOU, greater professional recognition for lecturers, and a more constructive and cordial relationship with campus administrators.

I have now served as our local's membership coordinator and chair of our membership committee for almost a year. I have regularly attended union meetings, and worked closely with Michelle and Robert Allen to create union literature, enter and organize unit data, and recruit new members.

As secretary of this local, I will write up the minutes for local board and membership meetings. I will also continue to work with the membership committee on improving union literature and communications, organizing our data, and building our membership.

Candidates for Board Member-at-Large

Robert Allen, Adjunct Professor

My name is Robert Allen and I am a Board Member-At-Large running for a second term. I was a Visiting Assistant Professor from 1994 until last year, when I was appointed Adjunct Professor in the African American and Ethnic Studies Departments. As an out-of-unit member I would like to see the union become more inclusive. There are many "visitors" and adjuncts who have a long affiliation with the University and who should have union representation.

Joan Heifetz Hollinger, Lecturer

I have been a lecturer-in-residence at Boalt School of Law for a decade, having previously had tenure at another law school. In addition to teaching courses and seminars at Boalt on the parent-child relationship and child welfare policy, I regularly teach two large lecture classes in the Legal Studies Program: Government and the Family and Sex, Reproduction and the Law. My research interests are primarily in family law, particularly adoption law and policy; my most recent book is Families by Law (NYU Press 2004) and, along with my law students, I continue to appear as amicus curiae in a number of precedent-setting contested adoption and custody cases in state and federal courts.

Since being elected to the UC AFT Board in 2004, I have worked with the Grievance Steward to more fully implement our current contract on the Berkeley campus. Workload and benefits issues are of particular concern to me and, if re-elected, I will continue to press for more equitable resolutions of these issues as well as for an expansion of our new professional development grants program.

Jim Stockinger, Lecturer

I bring a number of perspectives to the UC-AFT Berkeley Local. Since 1980 I have been a lecturer in the Sociology Department teaching classes on social theory, the sociology of culture, social change and the sociology of child care, and I have sat on several orals committees. As a true intellectual migrant laborer, I have also commuted to teach classes at Diablo Valley College and Sonoma State. For the last twenty years I have also worked with two-year-olds in the child care program at UCB. I can therefore claim to have worked both at the beginning and at the end of the educational process. I have also been the CUE shop steward for child care and sat across the table from UCB Labor Relations on several grievances and Unfair Labor Practice suits. In the last few years, I have spoken on behalf of UC lecturers and staff at labor rallies, and as a media rep for our UC-AFT Local, I’ve done many interviews with journalists, including a spot on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. I’ve attended UC-AFT Council meetings, and this year I am serving as a member of the Executive Board for this local.

It is my feeling that the most urgent challenges facing the UC-AFT Berkeley local are those of building our membership and raising the profile of our organization by building constructive links to Senate faculty, student groups and other labor organizations at UCB. At a time when there seems to be an institutional abandonment of the mission of this great public institution and a shameless betrayal of the Master Plan for Higher Education by the political establishment of this state, UC-AFT should join with students, faculty and staff in reaffirming our commitment to the ideal of an opportunity for a high quality higher education for every citizen of this state who has earned it.