CFT United

Something good is cooking in campus cafeterias, and the recipe includes happier staffs. From school kitchens in Berkeley to community college taquerías in San Diego, classified AFT locals are raising wages and winning full-time status for food service employees.

Big changes in Berkeley schools began when food service workers affiliated with AFT Local 6192, the Berkeley Council of Classified Employees. Before the change in 2012, Local President Paula Phillips said, managers used to warn workers not to miss work during the holidays.

Many legislators, although they seem good at first, have a “shelf life,” said Community College Council President Jim Mahler, which expires when they stop responding to the people who elected them. Mahler said to combat this by finding your own candidates. Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, winner of CFT’s Legislator of the Year Award, was just who the union was looking for.

In a panel discussion moderated by Joanne Waddell, president of the Los Angeles College Faculty Guild, four leaders in very different situations — three from California and one from Texas, a right-to-work state — talked about what they’d done to significantly increase their membership and get people involved with the union.

Passionate educator led CFT for five years, edited California Teacher for 15

Teacher, author and former CFT President Miles Myers died December 15 from complications related to heart disease. Myers devoted his six-decade career to improving educational standards and the conditions for teaching and learning in public education. He was 84.

After people in leadership at the local where he is the former president, United Teachers Los Angeles, got up to talk about his mentoring, his commitment to growing the movement, and the respect they have for him, the winner of this year’s Ben Rust award, John Perez, got up to speak.

Passing Proposition 30, officially known as the Schools and Local Public Safety Protection Act of 2012, turned years of cuts into a period of growth, CFT President Josh Pechthalt said at the CFT Convention. Not extending the law would be a huge setback for the state.

At a rally and march for fair pay and quality public education held the Friday of the CFT Convention in San Francisco, hundreds of attendees joined AFT Local 2121, the faculty union for City College of San Francisco, as they marched from the Hyatt Regency to offices of the college’s lead contract negotiator a few blocks away. Two dozen people — community and union leaders as well as members — blocked the entrance and got arrested in an act of civil disobedience. This came right after the union’s largest voter turnout ever for a strike vote, which was approved by 92 percent.

By Joshua Pechthalt, CFT President

Four years ago we talked about the need to pass Proposition 30, a measure that has added more than $6 billion dollars annually to the state budget after years of devastating cuts. Now we have to extend it. The measure for which we are gathering signatures — The Children’s Education and Healthcare Protection Act — will raise $5 to $11 billion a year, eliminate the sales tax increase, and continue to ask wealthy Californians to pay a bit more in personal income tax.

Linda McAllister, a sociology instructor at Berkeley City College and member of the Peralta Federation of Teachers, Local 1603, was one of four professors honored by the California Community Colleges Board of Governors with a Gerald C. Hayward Award for Excellence in Education, a designation that comes with $1,250. McAllister has sought access for traditionally underserved student populations, and piloted a program to recruit recent community college graduates with masters’ degrees to teach in the community colleges. She also developed curriculum, scheduling, and degree alignment so working adults could meet their degree goals.

Special Report by Joshua Pechthalt, CFT President

Education unions and public sector unions are facing legal attacks designed to destroy our ability to represent our members. Not surprisingly, these cases are supported by the usual anti-union law firms and wealthy backers. What follows is a snapshot of the cases CFT and other unions are now fighting.

When former Mother Jones reporter Kristina Rizga first went to San Francisco’s Mission High School, looking for a story on a low-performing school, she found a big disconnect between what standardized test scores showed and what was actually happening.