Newsroom
CFT launches new identity to reflect diverse membership
Classified employees gain more recognition
This spring, CFT launched a new identity in recognition of its diverse membership. A primary goal of the rebrand was to integrate the tagline A Union of Educators and Classified Professionals to acknowledge that CFT represents more than teachers and faculty members.
Our diverse union also represents dozens of job classifications for classified employees and support staff, paraprofessionals, as well as certificated librarians, psychologists, speech pathologists, and many others, all of whom contribute to the success of our students’ education.
How Peralta won the first pay parity in CA community colleges
San Mateo Federation campaign makes big strides toward parity
Equal pay for equal work. It’s a simple idea, but one that has remained all but elusive for part-time faculty, so much so that some have decried the quest for it as a Sisyphean effort. However, the recent gains made by the Peralta Federation of Teachers shows that parity is possible.
Now, Peralta pays its adjuncts at the same hourly rate for teaching and office hours as its full-time faculty — a first in the California Community College system.
Adjuncts and their unions fight on in the face of COVID
Enrollment decline, lost classes, adjunct relief fund
While the number of COVID cases are shrinking, and the vaccination rate increasing, the effects of the pandemic continue, with adjuncts having been hit particularly hard, as despite the heroic efforts of faculty to provide remote and online instruction, California community college enrollment has dropped systemwide by 11 to 12% since last fall, according to Edsource.
CFT seeks 85% adjunct teaching load, statewide path to pay parity
Union-sponsored legislation tackles long-standing adjunct issues
After last year’s heavily pandemic-impacted legislative session reduced the number of bills signed to its lowest number since 1967, the CFT is again taking up the adjunct cause on bills directed towards raising the part-time percentage cap on teaching in a single district, and in developing a path towards part-time/full-time pay parity.
Healthcare, transferable training top adjunct priorities at CFT Convention
Delegates resolve to address timely adjunct issues
At this year’s virtual CFT Convention held March 26-27, the Part-Time Faculty Committee sponsored two resolutions reflective of both the longstanding and new problems beginning to emerge in the wake of the pandemic which has impacted adjunct health and training.
Adjuncts at the table to win a New Deal for Higher Education
National campaign calls for sea change in higher ed
While the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified longstanding societal inequities in America, public higher education was already in a state of crisis, from the staggering costs of college, to the lack of access and support for lower income students, Black, indigenous, and people of color, the deteriorating, or clear lack of infrastructure, the reciprocal increase in highly paid administrative positions, and last but not least, decrease in full-time tenure track positions.
Jeff Freitas reelected CFT President, Luukia Smith Secretary Treasurer
ELECTION RESULTS
Results of the CFT officer elections were announced on May 1 after mail ballots were tabulated. The biennial election was held by mail due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a Virtual Convention. All newly elected leaders will take office on May 26, 2021.
Pass the PRO Act: Empower workers to organize and bargain
Call your senators now!
Union members have been standing up for dignity and a voice on the job. Please join the AFL-CIO to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. Reach out to your U.S. senators and urge them to pass this crucial worker empowerment legislation. You can call your senators at 866-832-1560 or by using this link.
CFT introduces significant bills in the new legislative session
Legislative Update
The CFT is sponsoring or co-sponsoring numerous bills in the new legislative session. You can find them below with links to the bill language.
Why California needs a New Deal for Higher Education
Value of national campaign brought home in CFT training
During the pandemic, issues in higher education — like underpaid adjuncts teaching the majority of classes, often without benefits; chronic underfunding; crushing student debt; and the focus narrowing to be only on job training rather than the public good — have come into greater relief.
Pandemic relief on the way: Kamala Harris, AFT leaders, Stanford physician
American Rescue Plan and COVID-19 vaccinations
AFT President Randi Weingarten addressed the CFT Convention, expressing thanks and gratitude for all the members have done—pivoting from the classroom to online, providing food delivery, and bringing hotspots to neighborhoods. Education workers did all this while taking care of their own children, living in homes with multiple generations, being at risk due to pre-existing conditions, and mourning people who had died from COVID, Weingarten said.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad on racial justice
“Good will is not a substitute for good work”
A history professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, who teaches classes such as Race, Inequality, and American Democracy and the former Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, with his work featured in the New York Times’ 1619 Project, and Ava DuVernay’s documentary about mass incarceration, 13th, Khalil Gibran Muhammad s