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Union Media
- CFT United is the CFT’s all-union magazine that contains information relevant to members including a section specific to the issues of classified employees.
- Classified Insider contains valuable news and information about the workplace issues of California classified employees and paraprofessionals and is emailed to members.
- AFT PSRP Reporter covers issues of relevance to classified employees and support staff members of the AFT Paraprofessional and School-Related Personnel (PSRP) division and is part of AFT Voices.
- Subscribe to the AFT PSRP email that contains news and information for classified employee and paraeducator members of the AFT.
Organizing Materials
- Get to Know Your CCE!
Learn more about the officers of the Council of Classified Employees on this flyer. - How Can You Participate?
Learn how you can get involved in the Council of Classified Employees and the larger CFT on this flyer. - Poster:
Be a UNIONIST – United in Fighting for Fairness, Prosperity, Justice, Equality. Post this colorful piece in your workplace!
Know Your Rights
- CalOSHA Health-and-Safety Rights for Workers:
This concise booklet produced by the Department of Industrial Relations/Cal-OSHA outlines the injury and illness prevention program required by your employer under the California Labor Code, your right to a workplace inspection, your right to refuse hazardous work, and your right to obtain documents and records. - Know Your Rights: A guide to workplace laws for classified employees and paraprofessionals in California
A comprehensive 40-page analysis of the California Education Code as it relates to classified employees and paraprofessionals covers topics such as hours of employment, vacation and leaves, refusal to perform unsafe work and collective bargaining rights, plus the federal Family and Medical Leave Act. It also contains your Weingarten Rights. -
Family
and medical leave
Our articles defines the leaves available in federal laws, state codes, and individual collective bargaining agreements. Your union local may also bargain improvements.
Our Classified Voice is Strong
At CalPERS
CalPERS is the retirement system for numerous groups of public employees in California, including many members of the classified service. The CCE monitors CalPERS actions and sends a representative to its board meetings.
- Mike O’Neill, a bus driver and member of the Jefferson AFT Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 1481, is the CCE liaison for CalPERS.
In the Community Colleges
The Consultation Council of the California Community Colleges comprises 18 representatives who have an opportunity to advise the chancellor and board of governors on state policy decisions. Thanks to successful CFT-sponsored legislation, classified staff now have two seats on the council.
- Pamela Ford, president of the Antelope Valley Federation of Classified Employees, AFT Local 4683, is the CFT representative on the Consultation Council.
CFT joins campaign to forge a New Deal for Higher Education
With the new Biden administration and Congress come new opportunities to ensure significant, sustainable public investment in higher education.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the long-standing crisis in public higher education. Declining state support, the erosion of tenure and shared governance, the increased use of contingent appointments, and the loss of the faculty voice on campus are threatening the core mission of higher education in our society. Now is the time to stand up for a just, inclusive system of higher education — one that can help transform our society.
California education unions release school reopening plan
CLASSES — A Pathway to Bringing Students Back to Schools
California teachers and classified employees want nothing more than to be back in our physical classrooms and school sites and know first-hand there is no equal substitute to regular, in-person learning.
California’s schools are the heart of their communities. For many of our most vulnerable and underserved populations, they are lifelines. The educational, social and emotional needs of California’s students, particularly those who often lack the technological and additional education support to sustain distance learning, are of paramount concern.
The hope that 2021 brings
Looking back on a year like no other, but with recovery in sight
By Jeffery M. Freitas, CFT President
As I reflect upon the year that is reaching its end, the shock of all we have endured these past many months hits me anew. When we started this year, I felt hopeful with many opportunities for success and change.
Paul da Silva became the candidate he wanted to see
First teacher elected to College of Marin Board of Trustees
For years, Paul da Silva, a biology teacher at the College of Marin and a member of United Professors of Marin, Local 1610, wondered about the lack of teachers on the college’s Board of Trustees and tried to talk retiring professors into running. No one took him up on it.
So when he decided in the summer of 2019 that he would retire, he concluded, to paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi, he’d have to be the candidate he wished to see in the world.
A First Lady who is a community college teacher
President-elect supports two years of free community college
Dr. Jill Biden, a community college teacher, union member, and soon to be First Lady, spoke virtually to members of the AFT and the National Education Association, thanking them for all the phone banking, text messaging, voter registration drives and poll work they did to get her husband, Joe Biden, elected. AFT President Randi Weingarten and NEA President Becky Pringle introduced her.
CFT website, UTLA strike series capture triple first place honors
Union wins nine first place awards for communications
The CFT won nine First Place awards in the International Labor Media Communications contest for work published in 2019, in a competition delayed by a few months because of the pandemic.
2019 was a busy year for the CFT and for union communications. In the first three months alone, the union experienced the UTLA strike, the launch of the new CFT website, and CFT’s 100th Anniversary Convention.
What I did to help win in Election 2020
Five retirees recount their extraordinary efforts
CFT retirees have broad-ranging interests and community relationships — and a lot of collective power. That is reflected in these five first-person accounts from very connected and active retirees.
With COVID on campus, strategic action saves classified jobs
Unions save graveyard custodial shift, defeat layoffs
El Camino College has been slowly resuming activity. Nursing, auto repair, construction and other “essential classes” returned to the Torrance campus in late September, along with scores of custodians, groundkeepers, computer techs and facilities staff.
Returning to normal is another matter. Administrators are trying to eliminate the night shift, even though “graveyard” is typically the busiest time for custodians. Meanwhile, four COVID cases on campus have underlined the pandemic’s ongoing threat, as well as the importance of properly trained and equipped cleaning crews.
A snapshot of Election 2020
The so-sweet national victory, mixed state results, and locals wins
On November 3, voters went to the polls to turn things around in our country and in our state. Or rather, many went to the polls, but many more had already cast mail ballots in the days and weeks leading up to the election, a sign of the times during a year of “stay at home” orders.
Peralta reaches 100 percent pay parity; locals win distance education support
From course conversion stipends to health benefits extensions
In spite of the pandemic, a number of local unions won big gains for adjuncts, from parity pay to distance education, to the preservation of healthcare for adjuncts with reduced loads. These wins are especially significant at this time in which revenues are falling and concerns over future budgets made many administrators skittish to bargain.
Q&A with Carl Williams: First classified AFT vice president from California
“We are essential and this work cannot be done without us”
On September 1, Carl Williams was elected to join 39 other AFT Vice Presidents from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Williams joins two other vice presidents from California, a group that has included former CFT Presidents Mary Bergan and Joshua Pechthalt over the years, and now current President Jeff Freitas.
The patient is on the table — Higher Education in America is sick
Opinion
By Geoff Johnson, AFT Guild, San Diego and Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community Colleges
Higher education in America is sick. Its classrooms and campuses have been largely shuttered, save but for students taking lab courses, or practicums, ironically in hospitals. Students and instructors are now confined to the domains of their computers and laptop screens in the educational netherworlds of Zoom or Cranium. With the exception of online instruction developed prior to the crisis, what is being delivered, more so than taught, is a curriculum of coping under the duress of the coronavirus pandemic.
Count every vote! Post-election organizing to defend democracy
Actions & trainings
Last Friday, the CFT Executive Council unanimously passed a resolution outlining our union’s principles to defend American democracy. The resolution follows a similar resolution passed last week by AFT and highlights four key areas that the CFT believes must be protected:
- Every American citizen registered to vote must be able to vote.
- Every vote must be counted.
- The electoral verdict must be respected.
Prop 15 defeated, but our coalition remains strong
CFT members worked so hard to put Proposition 15, also known as Schools & Communities First, on the November ballot and over the finish line right through the close of polling places on Election Day.
But after election day, Prop 15 was trailing by about 400,000 votes with approximately 4 million votes yet to be counted. CFT and campaign allies were optimistic and patient, holding out hope that the measure would amass the votes needed to pass.
