Newsroom
CFT leading voice of opposition at Calbright hearing
Community college faculty speak out at February 13 Senate hearing
Community college faculty mobilized on February 13 to let the state Legislature know that they want the enormous resources wasted on the Calbright online community college project redirected to the needs of the existing, underfunded campuses around the state. These campuses serve tens of thousands of students, while this one project has absorbed $120 million for fewer than 500 students.
Vote YES on Prop. 13, the California school safety bond
$15 billion for new facilities and modernization
Proposition 13, the School Safety Bond, will appear on the March 2020 California ballot. The initiative, which bears no relation to Prop. 13 from 1978, is the largest school facilities bond in state history, promoting adequate and equitable school facilities that will provide healthy, safe, and educationally appropriate school infrastructure for our children.
Endorsements: Presidential Primary Election
CFT picks for the California March 3 primary
California will hold its first March Primary Election this year because the Legislature moved the statewide primary forward from June so that Californians can have a greater say nationally. You may find CFT endorsements below. Your vote matters now more than ever!
Educators Choice Online Voter Guide
Find CFT endorsements tailored to your local ballot in our online voter guide. Simply enter your address on your phone or computer!
Orange County member killed in tragic helicopter crash
Colleagues mourn inspirational long-time baseball coach
CFT member and baseball coach John Altobelli was killed in the tragic helicopter crash in Calabasas on January 26, along with his wife, daughter, and six others including NBA great Kobe Bryant and his teenage daughter.
CFT members get the chance to bend the ears of state lawmakers
Members attend Legislative Reception
Members and leaders from local unions throughout the state got a chance to bend the ears of California lawmakers on January 28 at CFT Legislative Reception.
Tony Thurmond endorses Schools & Communities First
State superintendent of schools signs to qualify the ballot initiative
California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond formally endorsed the Schools and Communities First initiative on January 28 before a crowd of educators, support staff, parents, and students on the south steps of the State Capitol .
Our bold step forward to fully fund public education
Schools and Communities First
By Jeffery M. Freitas, CFT President
When CFT received the first batch of petitions to put Schools and Communities First initiative on the ballot in late October, I immediately ripped a box open and took out a form. I eagerly signed the fresh new document to add my name in support of this historic initiative.
How one career lecturer’s medical crisis is helping others win paid sick leave
UC-AFT fights for what’s right in healthcare
It’s not often that a personal medical ordeal results in a positive outcome that helps many other people, but that’s what happened when Andrew Tonkovich, a lecturer at UC Irvine, had to receive treatment for a brain tumor.
Finding “common ground” in higher education
Campus Equity Week conference brings together contingent faculty from all higher ed systems
Members, officers, and activists from higher education unions throughout California came together for a full day during Campus Equity Week to chart a strategy for defending public higher education. They denounced especially the way education institutions, under corporate pressure, increasingly rely on contingent instructors while treating them as outsiders.
State’s oldest AFT local shares 100th Birthday with CFT
United Educators of San Francisco, 1919-2019
Editor’s note: With uniquely linked histories, the CFT and AFT Local 61 both celebrate their 100th Anniversaries in 2019. What follows is a capsule history of the oldest local union in the California Federation of Teachers. From the search for true union representation in 1919 to the quest for affordable housing for union members 100 years later, the history of AFT Local 61 — the United Educators of San Francisco — is one of proud support for educators, their unions and students.
Retirees represent Federation at CARA Convention
How CATs — CARA Action Teams — advocate for issues important to seniors
One of the things Hene Kelly likes most about the California Alliance for Retired Americans is its democratic structure where the concerns of all its members get heard.
Another thing Kelly, a vice president of CARA and its legislative director, appreciates is that she thinks CARA goes beyond listening — they act.
Telling, Not Being the Joke
A personal essay by Andrew Tonkovich
Q: Tell me, how long have you been working here?
A: Ever since they threatened to fire me.
That old cornball joke still makes me laugh, 50 years after I read it in a kids magazine. I understood it then as honest if everyday acknowledgement by the presumably once-lazy worker of his or her required acquiescence to power, and of isolation. But its splendid trick syntax and on-the-nose calling out of the coercive relationship of management to labor suggested more, even to a 10-year-old: cognizance of at least the potential inherent power of the worker — all workers? — to apprehend, to subvert, to jest, however fatalistically, cynically or — my own favorite — insubordinately.