Pressure Mounts on UC System to Reach Agreement with Lecturers as Strike Looms

He and 11 other assemblymembers have signed a letter addressed to UC President Michael Drake that went out Tuesday, urging him to “prioritize labor peace and job stability for lecturers.” Other lawmakers have issued their own letters with the same sentiment, such as Dr. Richard Pan, a former UC faculty member who’s now a Senate Democrat representing Sacramento.

But there may be limits to mutual understanding. The UC denies that lecturers are being pushed out of their positions to make way for cheaper instructors, a chief union allegation.

Asked whether lecturers leave of their own volition, Silas, the head of UC’s labor relations, said, “Yes, some do.” Does that imply most leave for other reasons, such as being pushed out? Silas didn’t directly answer that.

“The term ‘pushed out’ is a mischaracterization,” Silas said. “The university has proposed to continue the dialogue with the union … if there does appear to be an issue of a trend, and to address those things with the union.”

How did we get here?

For more than two years UC-AFT, the union representing lecturers, has been at a standstill with the UC Office of the President over a new labor contract that provides them with greater job stability.

A CalMatters investigation showed that a quarter of lecturers — instructors typically with doctorates who provide about a third of the instruction undergraduates at the UC receive — don’t come back annually. Though the data CalMatters obtained doesn’t show why lecturers churn at rates higher than other education workers, a key grievance among them is that the UC doesn’t offer continuous work. Instead, most lecturers have to reapply for their jobs every quarter or year and rarely know whether they’ll have a job after their short contracts expire.

Core to the union’s demands is a promise to have lecturers evaluated so that their bosses can make informed hiring and dismissal decisions. Such a review system doesn’t exist at the UC for most lecturers, though it does at the larger California State University.

For some students, the lack of an evaluation for lecturers is perplexing.

“I want my teacher to be someone that knows what they’re doing,” said Sofia Stuart, a second-year biology major at UCLA who took part in a protest organized by lecturers last week. Without lecturer reviews, the UC could just hire inexperienced lecturers or renew ineffective ones, she said.

Natalie Lim, another UCLA student at the protest, held a sign calling for multiyear contracts for lecturers. “I want my institution to have morals and it doesn’t really feel like that right now,” she said.

The letter from lawmakers zeroes in on the lack of an evaluation process.

“By refusing to evaluate lecturers or use a merit-based retention process, the University also fails to foster a skilled teaching faculty, instead punishing experience and letting excellent faculty go arbitrarily,” the letter said. “Sadly, UC students are being cheated of educational continuity and dependable mentorship.”

Job stability and evaluations

The latest UC offer would go a long way to assuring more job stability for lecturers, but with key caveats.

McIver said that may look fair, but what happens if the department decides to keep the class anyway? The lecturer still won’t be able to have the class back, she added.

There’s less movement on matters of pay. The union wants bigger raises than what the UC is offering, which is about 4% in the first year of the five-year contract and 3% annually thereafter. Other lecturers would get additional bumps and extra merit pay. The lecturers say the UC can offer more across the board, citing the 5% increase in state support the recent state budget sent the UC’s way.

The UC argues it offers some of the best pay to lecturers among top research universities. “In October 2019, UC systemwide’s average salary on an annualized basis was $71,068 for pre-six lecturers and $92,693 for continuing lecturers,” wrote Ryan King, a UC spokesperson.

The UC offer on pay

But that number is misleading: More than half of lecturers are part-time, according to a CalMatters review of UC data the lecturer union shared, meaning most lecturers don’t get that annualized pay. And many lecturers work one term but not the next. A CalMatters analysis of wage data shows that lecturers on average make close to $33,000, while more permanent academic faculty make three to six times as much.

Another major issue is how much a lecturer is paid per class. Basically, lecturers get paid a percentage of an annual salary based on the “workload” of each class. The union is upset that the same classes can be counted as, for example, one-seventh of full-time work or one-ninth depending on the campus. They want consistency throughout the system.

For lecturers, those fractions matter: For one, the higher the percentage of full-time work, the greater the pay. Also, health benefits can kick in at around 44% or 50% of full-time work, depending on how many hours a lecturer works in the year. So every extra fraction of workload goes a long way to determining whether a lecturer has health insurance through the UC.

“The University of California should be a responsible employer and provide accessible, affordable, quality health benefits and a living wage for all of its employees so that no UC employee must rely on public assistance,” wrote Sen. Pan. His letter noted that some UC lecturers rely on Medi-Cal because they’re ineligible for UC health insurance.

Will lecturers strike?

McIver, the union president, doesn’t know whether lecturers will strike. She said they’d rather have a settled contract. “The things that we need to cross the finish line of this contract are not onerous for our employer,” McIver said. As far as the union is concerned, the ball is in UC’s court.

Friday’s bargaining meeting with the UC “is a positive step,” McIver said. But the union’s lecturers will decide whether they like the offer the UC is presenting, so it’s impossible to gauge how close to a resolution both sides are.

“We need our lecturers,” Silas said. “We appreciate and value our lecturers.”

No strike about the contract terms can happen until a state-led labor mediation process runs its course. Both sides are in mediation, but Friday’s meeting is independent of that state-led process.