Classified

Overview

Council of Classified Employees
Supporting the staff who make our campuses work

The Council of Classified Employees is the division of CFT that advocates for support staff members in classifications such as bus drivers, secretaries and office workers, paraprofessionals and teaching assistants, custodians and maintenance workers, food service workers, and other non-certificated employees working in early childhood centers, schools, and on college campuses throughout California.

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CCE President Carl Williams: “I encourage you to fight and Flex your Power!”

Carl Williams, President of the Council of Classified Employees and AFT Vice President, started out his address to attendees to the annual Council of Classified Employees conference by telling them he wasn’t going to preach to the choir. He wasn’t going to talk about how classified workers are the last hired and first fired. Or how they’re not treated as professionals. Or how they aren’t paid a living wage often leading to long commutes because they can’t afford to live where they serve. Or how public education relies on classified workers for its existence.

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Sunday Funday: Final day of CCE 2023 filled with excitement

The Classified Council of Employees President Carl Williams and Southern Vice President Tina Solórzano Fletcher work hard for the union, but they both also like to have fun. So, Sunday morning before attendees left the 2023 Classified Council of Employees Conference at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, Williams hosted a game show, Kahoot!, along with presiding over an auction and a raffle (the proceeds went to a fund for classified employees to attend events like the conference).

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UESF’s big win for paras shows strength and challenges for Classified workers
UESF leaders share the vision and wins of historic new contract

People call San Francisco a city of love and a city of fog, according to Cassondra Curiel, the President of United Educators of San Francisco. But what it really is, she said, is a union town. 

Curiel told attendees at the Council of Classified Employees Conference that the union of 6,500 classified and certificated members just won one of the biggest tentative agreements in the history of the organization.

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Kicking off CCE Conference 2023
Remarks on how to take political action, fighting for funding, and more

After greeting attendees at the local presidents’ collaboration on Friday afternoon at the 2023 Council of Classified Employees, the CCE President Carl Williams told them they would hear about a report on classified finances, the first one of its kind which would make what was happening with salaries more transparent. 

A report hasn’t existed before because, unlike data for other school employees, which is fairly similar, that’s not true with classified jobs, making it more difficult to compare peer institutions.

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Classified members take their fight to the Capitol

Teanna Tillery, the United Educators of San Francisco Vice President for Paraeduators, has been involved with the union in different capacities for about twenty years. She joined, she says because of the disparity in the way classified members were treated in negotiations.

“I worked in my community for years, and it’s just in my nature that if I see something I don’t understand I like to go to the source and try to understand it,” she said. “I just wanted to be part of the group who could address problems.”

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Division Officers

Carl Williams

Representatives from member local unions in the division elect officers of the Council of Classified Employees. You can reach the elected leaders by emailing them below.

Carl Williams, President
Lawndale Federation of Classified Employees, AFT Local 4529

Janet Eberhardt, Northern Vice President
United Educators of San Francisco, AFT Local 61

Tina Solórzano Fletcher, Southern Vice President
AFT Guild, San Diego and Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community Colleges, AFT Local 1931

Patti Serafin, Secretary
Palomar Council of Classified Employees, AFT Local 4522

Get to Know the Officers of the Council of Classified Employees.
Council of Classified Employees Constitution governs the division.

California Teacher CFT 100

Council of Classified Employees: Quality representation wins respect for support staff

Download a single-sheet illustrated history of the Council of Classified Employees

When the AFT in 1977 welcomed educational workers other than teachers into its ranks, paraprofessionals and classified employees became one of the fastest growing sectors of the national AFT. In the 1980s, several thousand California support staff voted for the AFT as their bargaining agent.