Newsroom
Compton campus police choose AFT as their union
Newest local looks forward to negotiating a strong new contract
Generations of Compton rappers have created an indelible portrait of their city’s mean streets. Life in this Los Angeles suburb isn’t easy.
Jermaine Ford and the 17 members of the Compton Unified School District police are a “thin blue line” sworn to keep the 36 schools and additional dozen district facilities safe. Their job hasn’t gotten any easier, either.
Common sense gun control: A school security guard lives with the loss of his son
A.J. Frazier is a familiar face around San Francisco’s Lowell High School. Frazier has helped guard the campus for the last 15 years, after patrolling Mission High for 15 years.
Few people knew about the pain the outgoing ex-Marine carried inside — until he shared it at a recent rally in Santa Ana’s Centennial Park responding to the deadly shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.
Republicans win – Democrats lose in community college funding proposal
By Jim Mahler, President, Community College Council
It’s taken for granted these days that as far as state budget decisions go, Republican legislators are bystanders, while the Democratic supermajority makes the major fiscal decisions.
However, Republican lawmakers and their constituents have new reason to celebrate, as far as California Community Colleges go, if Gov. Brown gets his way and the proposed new community college funding formula becomes law.
UTLA rally draws thousands in call for ‘the schools LA students deserve’
Today thousands of educators from across Los Angeles jammed Grand Park today in a rally for “the Schools LA Students Deserve.” They arrived by rail, bus, car and on foot—wearing UTLA red to send a loud message to the Los Angeles Unified School District that teachers will not stop fighting for smaller class sizes, fully staffed schools, clean and safe schools, and fair compensation.
United Teachers Los Angeles was joined in the rally by students, parents, and community groups and supported by its affiliates CFT, CTA, AFT and NEA.
Support paid office hours for part-time faculty
Send a letter to Gov. Brown asking that more money be put in the State Part-time Office Hours Fund. These letters work. A similar campaign last year helped secure a $5 million increase in the fund, an increase of over 70 percent. That said, the state fund only matches about 10 percent of paid part-time office hours funds, which is why office hours funding is either limited or non-existent in most districts.
Los Rios wins top award for its Part-Timer’s Almanac
There are adjunct survival guides out there which give basic union info, and perhaps maybe where the copy machines are located on campus, then there’s The Part-Timer’s Almanac, A Compendium of Valuable Information, which is perhaps the most comprehensive, adjunct-oriented union publication published by a local union.
Yes, Virginia, adjuncts can get unemployment benefits
Even if you have received a tentative offer of employment for the next semester, you are entitled to apply for unemployment benefits over the break immediately upon completion of your last working day of the semester.
Adjunct instructors are considered at-will employees, because despite the “tentative assignment offer” one may receive, this is not legally considered a “reasonable assurance of employment.”
Membership drives in the community colleges mean more adjunct power
The forthcoming Supreme Court ruling in Janus vs. AFSCME poses a serious threat to union strength. Any union is only as strong as its membership base, and when unions have higher percentages of the workers in its unit as active members, they are stronger at the bargaining table, and better able to protect its workers from violations of their rights.
Part-timer health benefits: The successes and challenges ahead
Among the many challenges that part-time, or contingent faculty face, health care benefits, or rather, the lack thereof, has been one of the most significant.
According to Bloomberg, healthcare is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States, and in spite of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, in March 2010, the number of bankruptcies attributed to healthcare costs tripled in 2017, while the general rate of bankruptcies fell overall.
Convention votes to raise part-time workload cap to 80 percent
At this year’s CFT Convention, delegates passed Resolution 15 calling for the CFT to support changing the workload cap in a community college district to 80 percent of a full-time equivalent load, effectively allowing part-time faculty to teach up to 12 units.
CFT faculty leaders to testify on California’s Master Plan for Higher Education
The Assembly Select Committee on the Master Plan for Higher Education has scheduled a public hearing on Friday, May 4, at UC Riverside to examine how to meet the needs of faculty and staff to best support our students.
100 years of the CFT — a capsule history
The CFT turns 100 on May 31, 2019. To kick off this anniversary year, California Teacher digs into the archives to present a commemorative issue about the rich history of our statewide federation of unions. The big events — legislation, elections, social trends — described here affected every member. But this capsule history cannot possibly relate the profound impact almost 100 years of activism had on thousands of individual education workers.