Newsroom

California Teacher CFT Convention
Civil Rights

Leader of Moral Mondays Movement brings delegates to their feet

North Carolina’s Reverend Barber says it’s time for some righteous indignation.

“These are serious times,” Reverend William Barber II told the CFT Convention delegates on Sunday morning. Barber is president of the NAACP in North Carolina and the leader of the fast-growing Moral Mondays Movement, which protests cuts to education, healthcare and food stamps. He worked delegates into a fervor telling them that sometimes they needed to get out of their conference seats and go into the streets to fight back against things they think are wrong, and that it’s time for some righteous indignation.

California Teacher lecturers librarians
Organizing

UCLA professor leads mobilization of lecturers and librarians
Statewide campaign builds on established strength in campus locals

Goetz Wolff has taught at UCLA for more than 20 years, but was generally more involved with Southern California’s vibrant labor movement than with the union on his job. Wolff, for example, earned high praise for his six years as research director at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, but barely knew the ins and outs of the University Council-AFT.

California Teacher labor solidarity privatization
Collective Bargaining

CFT boycotts Staples to save postal worker jobs
Union asks members not to purchase supplies at low-wage retailer

The CFT is boycotting office supply retailer Staples at the request of the American Postal Workers Union, which is opposing a no-bid sweetheart deal between the U.S. Postal Service and the giant office supply retailer to operate postal counters in Staples stores. An estimated one-third of Staples’ revenues come from the sale of school supplies, many purchased by teachers and other school employees for classrooms.

Article part-time faculty representational elections
Organizing

More part-time faculty choose AFT/CFT as their union
Non-credit faculty at Citrus College, Grossmont-Cuyamaca Colleges join locals

Faculty teaching non-credit courses at both Citrus College and the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Colleges have chosen AFT as their union. Non-credit hourly part-time faculty at Citrus and continuing education part-time faculty at Grossmont-Cuyamaca had been paid significantly less than their colleagues teaching for-credit courses.

Now the faculty have union representation, are on salary schedules with opportunities for schedule advancement, and can accrue sick leave.

Article part-time faculty unemployment benefits
Workplace Rights

When do you qualify for unemployment benefits?

If you are teaching summer school, you may qualify for unemployment benefits in the periods before or after summer session. If you do not have a summer or fall teaching assignment, or another job, you may be entitled to unemployment benefits.

This results from a 1989 legal challenge brought by the CFT in the landmark case Cervisi v. California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board.

Article part-time faculty pay equity
Collective Bargaining

How does your pay rate compare to others?
CFT releases comprehensive salary survey of part-time faculty

Have you ever wondered how your pay rate compares to that of other part-time faculty throughout the state? Who gets paid for office hours and how much? Will you earn more if you have a doctorate? What percentage are you earning of what full-timers make at your college for their teaching duties?

Article part-time faculty reemployment rights union communications
Organizing

Mark James Miller: Meet one of the hardest working organizers of part-timers

English instructor and president of the Part-Time Faculty Association of Allan Hancock College Mark James Miller says that one of the accomplishments of which he is most proud is “getting administrators to recognize how important part-time faculty are. Part-time faculty used to be invisible to them, or seen as just interchangeable parts. That’s not the case anymore.”