UC Workers United
Perspectives from the Rank and File workers of the University of California:our struggles to fight outsourcing, to protect our pension, & get decent wages.
Health Workers "Sick From Genocide" Speakout At SFGH/UCSF To Release Dr. Abu Safiya & All Prisoners
youtu.be/nXmpXWn_5MQ
As part of an international day of action initiated by Doctors Against Genocide called "Sick From Genocide”healthcare workers spoke out at San Francisco General Hospital and UCSF. They talked about their demand for the release of Dr. Abu Safiya. He and many other healthcare workers were arrested and beaten by Israeli IDF forces and remain imprisoned. Healthcare workers talked how they are being affected and the connection between the attack on healthcare workers and the people of Gaza with the treatment of working people and poor in the United States. They also discussed how healthcare workers are being harassed and retaliated including suspensions and firings. Workers are also being retaliated for wearing watermelon buttons indicating solidarity with the people of Palestine. The Biden administration has offered Israel another $8 billion for the continuing genocide. This action took place on January 6, 2024.
Additional Media:
Doctors Against Genocide
doctorsagainstgenocide.org/
Stop Genocide & War Crimes By Israel/US youtu.be/ICHSWsX_V5c](youtu.be/ICHSWsX_V5c Doctors Against Genocide
doctorsagainstgenocide.org/
UC Workers Speak Out On Palestine At UPTE AFSCME 3299 Strike At UCSF Mission Bay campus youtu.be/DEtHkawLV58
UCSF Doctor & SEIU 1021/CWA UPTE Workers Speak Out On Palestine At SF General Hospital
youtu.be/GNCfpDus_5g
No Room For Emergency San Francisco’s Biggest Hospital System: Don’t Talk About Palestine theintercept.com/2024/11/19/ucsf-medical-palestine-speech/
UC Regents, Unions & The Struggle Against Genocide and Zionism
youtu.be/xmy2ZJGKYjI
Production of Labor Video Project
Protect Workers Freedom of Expression At UCSF docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfATaDuZlDdXkD2NqDSRNO7uIJXyMstLZMrlWd8uxpFPsu5Og/viewform?fbcli…. Pledge to
The growing need to protect workers ability to speak up for human rights and against racism is paramount to the tenets of union organizing and as healthcare workers, we advocate and care for communities everywhere. We are in a moment where workers across the country are facing a concerted effort by their employers to repress their voices and their rights. Workers are being heavily scrutinized due to their activism, use of free speech and protesting.
We are deeply disappointed to see this happening at UCSF, an institution that advertises its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. While the University allows workers to wear insignia in support of certain marginalized communities, organizations, and unions, it is forcing workers to remove watermelon pins, a symbol that represents the Palestinian people. UCSFs demand for workers to remove watermelon pins is a violation of our right to freedom of expression and threatens our ability to stand up for marginalized communities everywhere. If you believe that workers should be protected in their right to free speech and the ability to represent the communities they care for and about please sign this pledge.
Endorsed by
California Nurses Association – CNA
UPTE CWA 9119
Pledge to Protect Workers Freedom of Expression
docs.google.com
The growing need to protect workers ability to speak up for human rights and against racism is paramount to the tenets of union organizing and as healthcare workers, we advocate and care for communiti…
UC faces over $500M budget shortfall and eyes tuition increase for new nonresident students
www.berkeleyside.org/2024/11/14/uc-faces-over-500m-budget-shortfall-and-eyes-tuition-increase-for…
The University of California is considering a $3,400 jump in tuition for new nonresident students next fall. Meanwhile, the system is planning billions in construction projects.
By Mikhail Zinshteyn | CalMatters
Nov. 14, 2024, 11:14 a.m.
The University of California is eyeing a looming budget gap of half a billion dollars next year. To help balance the books it’s relying in part on its out-of-state undergraduates.
Meanwhile, the system is pouring tens of billions of dollars into construction projects for seismic retrofitting, new classrooms and medical centers — while also acknowledging it lacks the funding to build or renovate most of what it needs.
Out-of-state undergraduates at the UC are charged more than three times the total tuition in-state students are expected to pay. Now system leaders want to increase the supplemental tuition for new non-resident undergraduates by $3,402 next fall, an amount that’s $2,208 more than what the supplemental tuition would increase by under existing UC policy.
A UC regents committee approved the new hike Wednesday; a full board vote on whether to greenlight the measure is scheduled for Thursday.
Under a model passed in 2021, each new cohort of undergraduates sees higher tuition and fees than the previous crop of new students but that tuition stays flat for their time at the UC. In-state students are charged tuition and a systemwide fee. Out-of-state students are charged that plus a much larger supplemental fee. The base tuition and fee would go up as planned under the 2022 model; only the supplemental fee would rise at a higher than expected amount.
All told, it would mean new nonresident undergraduates would pay $52,536 in total mandatory tuition next fall, excluding separate campus fees that are an average of $1,700. Current new nonresident undergraduates pay $48,636 annually, plus campus fees.
The move would affect the roughly 15% of UC undergraduates, including transfer students, who live outside of California and will begin their studies at the university system next fall. The increase wouldn’t affect current students or future graduate students.
“As UC prepares for an anticipated state budget cut that could impact student services across the entire system, we are proposing an increase to support core operations without raising costs for current students and California residents,” wrote UC spokesperson Omar Rodriguez in an email.
The hike would increase revenue by about $41 million for the system annually, Rodriguez wrote.
The impending half-billion shortfall next summer would occur if state lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom make good on a deal to delay previously promised new money for the UC and apply a cut to its state support.
UC’s operating revenue is estimated to be about $53 billion in 2024-25. Most of that is from the system’s medical services work, including hospitals. Its core mission of educating students, largely faculty salary and benefits as well as financial aid, makes up about $11 billion of the system’s budget. That amount is almost evenly paid for with state dollars and a combination of tuition revenue and other university funds.
It’s among the numerous fiscal details that emerged at the regents’ regularly scheduled November meeting, including the revelation that the UC plans to spend $30 billion to repair or replace its increasingly aging stock of academic buildings, medical centers and dorms by decade’s end. And yet, that massive sum falls far short of the 10-campus system’s stated construction needs — a total of $53 billion in projects without a funding source.
The building spree is occurring as UC trundles toward a goal of adding 23,000 new California students by 2030 — fueled in part by lawmaker demands that the vaunted system make space for more California high schoolers.
The tuition hike in context
In some ways the emphasis on out-of-state students is a return to form for the UC, which both relies on these students for the much higher tuition they pay but also is under pressure by lawmakers to limit how many non-Californian undergraduates the system enrolls.
Eduardo Tapia Jr-Urbieta, an executive officer for the UC Student Association, which represents undergraduate students, said that the student association opposes the increase. “Opportunity to higher education should not face any more barriers. Instead of increasing the salaries of UC administrators, let’s make sure college is more affordable for all,” he told regents yesterday.
Those September raises came in two waves: 4.2% for senior UC officials, such as the system president and most campus chancellors, and extra raises, including for most of the chancellors — ranging from 16% to 33%. The extra chancellor raises are paid with private donations, not tuition or state support. The updated chancellor salaries range from $785,000 to nearly $1.2 million. The new UC Berkeley chancellor, Rich Lyons, is paid $946,450, with $200,000 coming from private funds.
Nonresident undergraduate students tend to have higher family incomes than resident students. In 2021, 45% of nonresident undergraduates had family incomes of above $185,000. The same was true for 25% of undergraduates from California. Nearly three-quarters of nonresident undergraduates came from households exceeding $93,000; for California-based undergrads, it was 45%.
Still, nonresident students on average pay much more to attend a UC campus, even after all financial aid is factored into their costs. The net price — which includes tuition, housing and other related costs minus grants and scholarships — for resident undergraduates with household incomes above $180,000 was around $37,000 a year last fall. For nonresident undergraduates, the average net price was $67,000.
“I support it (the nonresident tuition increase). I’ll get pushback for that, but here we are,” said Josiah Beharry, a student regent who can cast a vote on the board.
UC officials said that compared to some other major public universities, UC’s nonresident undergraduates pay lower nonresident fees. For example, University of Michigan nonresident students paid $11,500 more than their nonresident UC peers in 2023-24. University of Virginia nonresident undergraduate paid $7,000 more. Even when adjusting for living costs, nonresident Californians are charged less for their education, UC officials said.
UC policy permits 20% of new nonresident tuition revenue to be reserved for financial aid for nonresident undergraduates.
$30 billion in planned construction
The $30 billion construction plan — and $50 billion in projects without a funding source — were spelled out in a new, 207-page report detailing construction plans that UC budget officials presented to the system’s regents Wednesday.
“The University’s enrollment growth and continuing needs for renewal, modernization and seismic correction of existing facilities are the key drivers of capital investments,” the report said.
Cranes have been soaring above the system’s campus skylines for years.
Since 2011, the UC has added beds for 42,000 students, growing from nearly 75,000 beds. The increase means the system can house 40% of its students, up from 32% a decade ago.
And UC isn’t done as it’s on track to build dorm space for 14,000 new beds at all nine undergraduate-serving campuses through 2030 — at a cost of $6.9 billion. That’s nearly half-a-million-dollars per bed.
But while student housing projects can largely pay for themselves over time through the rents campuses charge, classroom buildings have fewer sources of cash beyond system bonds and state dollars — which the UC says are hardly enough to meet campus needs.
Take for example all the seismic repairs UC says it must undergo to extend the life of its buildings, with structures built in the 1950s and 1960s representing the largest chunk of UC’s gargantuan building footprint. UC has $16 billion in seismic retrofit needs but only identified funding for 16% of that, or $2.5 billion, last academic year.
It’s not just finding money that’s a concern for UC. As buildings undergo remodeling, the classrooms, research and other activity core to the system’s mission has to continue. “The scope and complexity of planning required to minimize these disruptions can often necessitate the construction of temporary or replacement space,” the report read.
The scale of the need is vast. According to the UC, about 1,464 buildings require seismic upgrades across the system.
UC officials disclosed yesterday that the system is debuting a new plan in which campuses will reduce its backlog of structures that need seismic upgrades by 4% annually, with the structures most in need of an overhaul receiving priority.
And then there’s all the new construction UC needs. The system completed 139 projects at a cost of $1.4 billion last academic year — but has more than $20 billion in active construction plans for about 400 projects. More than half of those are for UC’s extensive medical care operation, in part to satisfy state rules on strengthening hospitals to better withstand earthquakes.
Through 2030, UC’s construction plans total $30 billion, with about $12 billion for its medical centers. Philanthropy helps pay for all those projects, but only a little. Just about $2 billion of the construction plan budget will come from gifts. About $300 million will come from state funds directly — a relatively tiny portion of the overall revenue picture for the system’s six-year building plan. Much of the projects will be paid for with external financing, such as bonds that the system sells to investors.
But that’s just projects with a funding source. UC Berkeley, for example, has more than $14 billion in construction needs but has identified the funding for just about $2.8 billion of that.
What is getting built at the system’s oldest campus? For starters, a new undergraduate academic building that’ll include 27 classrooms and a 400-seat auditorium with a rooftop terrace. All of that costs $137 million. It’s scheduled to open in the 2025-26 academic year.
UC faces over $500M budget shortfall and eyes tuition increase for new nonresident students
www.berkeleyside.org
The University of California is considering a $3,400 jump in tuition for new nonresident students next fall. Meanwhile, the system is planning billions in construction projects.
‘Time is running out.’ University unions rush to organize before the Trump White House
www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-12-16/university-unions-rush-to-organize-ahead-of-trump-adm…
Academic worker union members hold picket signs at UC Irvine.
Academic worker union members protest at UC Irvine in 2022. The strike resulted in significant gains in pay and other working conditions. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
By Jaweed Kaleem
Staff Writer
Dec. 16, 2024 3 AM PT
A flurry of university union activity is unfolding ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Part-time and non-tenure track faculty at USC have filed for a union election to represent roughly 2,500 workers.
Two years after 48,000 University of California academic workers won big pay gains in a historic six-week strike, labor experts and organizers predicted that their success, along with a labor-friendly Biden administration, would spur broad union activism within higher education institutions.
A flurry of recent university union activity coupled with fears of a more pro-business, anti-labor Trump White House is providing the answer. At campuses across the country — including top California universities, New York University and Harvard — unions representing graduate student workers, part-time and non-tenure track faculty and others are rapidly and aggressively moving to organize workers.
For many part-time and non-tenured faculty, who are a backbone of undergraduate education, the union activism reflects their longtime frustrations as lower paid and easily let-go instructors, experts said. Now, time is of the essence.
“It’s the pre-Trump rush,” said John Logan, a professor in the department of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, as unions anticipate new conservative appointees taking over positions in the federal agency that enforces U.S. labor laws. Unions, he said, “are thriving on campuses.”
At USC, a majority of the 2,500 adjunct, part-time and full-time non-tenure track faculty last week said they had signed union authorization cards and filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board for an election, with hopes that votes will be certified before Inauguration Day.
How California school leaders think Trump’s Linda McMahon could affect education
In Burbank, nearly 200 faculty members at the New York Film Academy’s Los Angeles campus voted this month to form a union. At the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita, a majority of the more than 600 full-time and part-time faculty and staff have signed union authorization cards, though there has not yet been an election.
“We don’t know what Trump is going to do,” said Nadia Suryawinata, a union leader at Caltech in Pasadena, where 2,000 graduate student workers and postdoctoral scholars formed a union in February and overwhelmingly voted this month to authorize their leadership to call a strike — a tactic to speed up negotiations to secure a contract.
“Time is running out. We want a contract by inauguration,” said Suryawinata, a doctoral student in biology who teaches classes and conducts research.
University unions grow
Many of the campuses are organizing with United Auto Workers, the union with origins in car manufacturing whose ranks have increasingly become filled with academics. Campus unions now represent a quarter of the roughly 400,000 UAW members, including graduate-student workers and postdoctoral researchers at the University of California, Caltech, USC and Cal State. UAW is also part of the non-tenured faculty union drive at USC and efforts at CalArts.
A September report from the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College found that both student worker and faculty unions are growing — with students labor movements moving at a faster clip.
Between 2012 and 2023, the number of unionized graduate student and postdoctoral workers more than doubled, from roughly 64,000 to 150,000. Faculty unions also increased by 7%, from 374,000 to 402,000, in the same period, the report said.
How Trump’s win could reshape UC research, LGBTQ+ rights and student loan forgiveness
Nov. 8, 2024
Today, more than a third of graduate-student and postdoctoral workers are unionized while a quarter of faculty are.
“Among faculty, the drive for unionization has been strongest among non-tenure track faculty,” said William A. Herbert, the executive director of the center who was co-author of the report. “This reflects the massive restructuring of faculty, over the past decades, to largely precarious low-wage college teaching and researching positions.”
“Both groups are a cheap, disposable labor force for universities, and they are feeling the same pressures as everyone else who is working and trying to pay the bills,” said Logan, the SFSU labor studies professor. “Some universities will pay adjuncts about $5,000 a semester per class.”
In California, the biggest fight is expected at USC, where the potential new union called United Faculty-UAW would represent around a third of all faculty. Organizers filed with the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday. The union would cover eligible employees at all USC schools except for the School of Cinematic Arts, where a separate adjunct faculty union formed in February, and the Keck School of Medicine. No election date is set.
The UC union of academic workers that struck in 2022, UAW 4811, recently averted a clash when membership voted to extend its contract by six months in exchange for 4% raises next October and “transitional funding programs” at each of the University of California campuses.
The funding program, piloted at UCLA this year, allows graduate-student researchers who have had breakdowns in relations with their advisors or have reservations about their funding sources — such as opposition to work tied to the U.S. military or weapons research, an issue that arose during pro-Palestinian protests — to transition away from their current positions.
At UCLA, union members must demonstrate “incompatibility in research goals, or irresolvable differences in the adviser-advisee relationship” to move to new advisors.
Girding for battle at USC
Pay is at the center of union organizing at USC, where non-tenure track professors complain of semester-to-semester contracts with little job security, minimal or nonexistent raises and moves by the university to cut benefits. Current openings for part-time roles at USC on its website list jobs with pay as low as $29.06 an hour in the case of an opening for an adjunct instructor of health policy and management in the Sol Price School of Public Policy.
Several faculty interviewed by The Times also cited cuts to tuition benefits for children and spouses of faculty as a reason they supported unionizing in hopes of having a bigger say in benefit decisions.
“The cost of living is enormous in Los Angeles and keeps on going up, but USC hasn’t been able to keep up,” said Sanjay Madhav, a unionization supporter in the USC Viterbi engineering school who has been a full-time non-tenure track associate professor at the school for 13 years.
Patrick Corbin, an full-time, non-tenure track associate professor in the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, pointed to a COVID-era university decision as among the issues that led him to want a union.
SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA – MAY 20: U.C. Santa Cruz workers who are union members of U.A.W. 4811, which is part of the United Auto Workers, and pro-Palestinian protesters carry signs as they demonstrate in front of the U.C. Santa Cruz campus on May 20, 2024 in Santa Cruz, California. Academic workers at the University of California, Santa Cruz walked off the job Monday morning to strike in protest of the U.C. system’s handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Organizers say the walkout will not last beyond June 30. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
CALIFORNIA
Amid widespread cost-cutting and a national economic slump, “USC unilaterally froze their contributions to our retirement benefits,” Corbin said. “I wasn’t asked about that. I did not take a vote on it. I’m 60. I cannot get that loss back.”
In a statement, USC said it opposes the union because the administration believes all faculty are managers as a result of being able to vote for Academic Senate officers and serve in other positions that make recommendations on how the campus runs.
“USC respects the role of unions and has worked collaboratively with them for many years. But we have serious concerns — legal, academic, and operational — about a union purporting to represent almost all of our research, teaching, practitioner, and clinical faculty. All of our faculty have an equal voice, and exercise it regularly, in our system of shared governance over how the university operates,” the statement said.
“We do not believe our faculty need a union to speak for them or that applicable law will permit it. We look forward to continuing to work, as we always have, in direct collaboration with our faculty on matters of importance to our university.”
Union organizers argue that playing nonbinding advisory roles on campus is far different from being in management. As an example, they point to a recommendation the Academic Senate made in 2022 that USC implement an annual cost-of-living salary increase. The university rejected the idea.
An attempt to organize some of the same non-tenure track faculty in 2015 and 2016 under the Service Employees Industrial Union fizzled out. Faculty at Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Science voted against unionization, but union supporters argued USC interfered with the process. Those at the Roski School of Art and Design voted in favor of unionizing. USC sued in multiple court cases over the legality of the Roski election and, by 2019, the SEIU withdrew its petition to represent faculty.
“Back then, it felt like it was a very top-down approach by the SEIU. I wasn’t involved, but I knew it was happening,” said Scott Uriu, who has taught part time in the USC School of Architecture for 14 years and supports unionization. “Today it feels much more like a groundswell.”
'Time is running out.' University unions rush to organize before the Trump White House
www.latimes.com
A flurry of labor organizing is unfolding at California universities as campus union leaders predict a less labor-friendly environment.
In the Fight Against Avian Flu, UPTE-CWA Diagnosticians Blow the Whistle on Dire Laboratory Conditions
cwa-union.org/news/fight-against-avian-flu-upte-cwa-diagnosticians-blow-whistle-dire-laboratory-c…
December 12, 2024
Diagnosticians at the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System (CAHFS), represented by UPTE-CWA Local 9119, held an informational picket earlier this week to blow the whistle on dire laboratory conditions interfering with the critical work of testing and monitoring for avian flu (H5N1 or HPAI), primarily in dairy and poultry populations. The CAHFS is a part of the University of California, Davis, and plays an essential role in safeguarding the health and safety of food and livestock in California and across the nation.
High turnover caused by inadequate compensation, poor morale, and toxic working conditions has been left unaddressed by the University of California, leading to short-staffing in the laboratory during a predictably busy peak season for the spread of avian flu. The current staffing crisis leaves the broader public and the agricultural industry susceptible to the economic and health impacts of an outbreak.
“Human error can occur when we are stretched thin and overworked. The combination of high workload, short deadlines, and inconsistency of communication creates a high potential for mistakes, which could be catastrophic for consumers and producers alike,” said Victoria Ontiveros, a staff Research Associate currently working at CAHFS.
“We are tackling the most pressing scientific challenges of our time. While we have been bargaining with the University of California for a contract that recognizes our critical and life-saving work. We have been disappointed with their lack of urgency and illegal, unfair labor practices. To prevent another outbreak on par with or worse than the COVID-19 pandemic, we must test and contain the spread of the virus. That starts with investing in the committed workers on the frontlines of safeguarding our communities from H5N1,” said Amy Fletcher, a staff Research Associate working at the Department of Food Science and Technology, who also serves as the UPTE-CWA UC Davis Co-Chair and union-wide UPTE-CWA Treasurer.
UPTE-CWA Local 9119.j
Members of UPTE-CWA Local 9119 marched and rallied, calling on the University of California-Davis to fully resource frontline medical workers in the fight against avian flu.
cwa-union.org
The current staffing crisis leaves the broader public and the agricultural industry susceptible to the economic and health impacts of an outbreak.www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3946686202272773&id=679569912&mibextid=wwXIfr
This content isn't available right now
When this happens, it’s usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it’s been deleted.
A California labor union AFSCME 3299 helped oust a Democrat from the state Capitol. His replacement wants to curb union power.
www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-12-09/a-california-union-helped-oust-an-oc-democrat-from-th…
California Senate District 37 candidates Josh Newman, left, and Steven Choi.
Democratic state Sen. Josh Newman, left, lost reelection to Republican Steven Choi (Los Angeles Times)
By Mackenzie Mays
Staff Writer
Dec. 9, 2024 3 AM PT
A University of California workers union was successful in its fight to oust an Orange County Democrat from the state Senate after he did not support a bill it backed in the Legislature. But in doing so, the union may have helped elect a Republican who has a history of opposing organized labor.
Democratic Sen. Josh Newman of Fullerton lost reelection after American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 spent more than $1 million supporting candidates to replace him in the primary and later in ads bashing him and tying him to high gas prices and crime.
Although the union, which represents service workers across UC campuses, did not support Republican Steven Choi, a conservative from Irvine, its decision to oppose a largely pro-labor Democrat probably helped cinch the race in a close contest.
It was a strategy that demonstrates how much power labor unions can wield in California politics. In a Legislature where Democrats hold more than enough seats to form a supermajority, retaining a member of the party may have been less important to the union than making a point about the consequences of crossing labor.
“This is an unprecedented circumstance where a labor union spent well over a million dollars of their members’ monies to take down a Democrat with a solid labor record to the benefit of a Republican that has been anti-labor throughout his legislative career,” Newman said. “It’s really stunning.”
Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, of District 28, celebrates after being sworn in during the opening session of the California Legislature in Sacramento, Calif., Monday, Dec. 5, 2022. The legislature returned to work to swear in new members and elect leaders for the upcoming session. (AP Photo/José Luis Villegas, Pool)
The California Federation of Labor gave Choi a 6% on its annual legislative scorecard in 2022 when he served in the state Assembly, where he voted against bills to support fast-food workers, allow striking workers to keep health benefits and protect farmworkers who unionize. The same year, Newman received an 87% score, voting in favor of many union-backed bills.
Newman conceded last month after losing to Choi by less than 2 percentage points, or about 6,000 votes. The Democrat said the union’s 35,000 members should be “furious” with its leadership for helping Choi — who has been unfriendly to labor in the past — win a seat in the Legislature.
He believes that the union’s campaign against him was spurred by his reluctance to support a bill last year that would have put a measure on the ballot asking voters to enshrine basic labor standards for all UC employees. The bill was sponsored by AFSCME Local 3299 and fizzled before it ever made it to the governor’s desk, facing a long list of opponents who said it was unnecessary and unfairly singled out one group of public workers.
Choi, an 80-year-old immigrant from South Korea who previously served as the mayor of Irvine, is reluctant to give the union any credit for his win. Like Newman, he too said he would not have supported the bill that sparked the union’s ire.
A conservative who opposes gay marriage, Choi said his plans for his four-year term are to “achieve a balance of power” in the Democratic-dominated Legislature.
He opposed a union-backed measure on last month’s ballot that would have raised the minimum wage to $18 an hour and said he has concerns about how large unions such as the California Teachers Assn. use their power — often donating millions to support Democratic candidates and winning some of the strongest worker laws in the country.
In an interesting twist, Choi is considering proposing legislation that would prohibit unions from financially supporting and endorsing their preferred candidates in elections, saying that they “take hostage” politicians who don’t vote their way.
“It’s very unfair, how powerful they are,” he said. “It’s a very unhealthy practice.”
Unions spent big in the 2024 election, with the Service Employees International Union and the California Teachers Assn. spending more than $1 million in independent expenditures alone to support Democrat Michelle Chambers in the hotly contested race for Senate District 35. The unions spent about $2 million in ads opposing her Democratic opponent Laura Richardson, who narrowly won the South Los Angeles race.
Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, didn’t comment on the specifics of the Senate District 37 race between Newman and Choi but said in an email Friday that “whenever and wherever working people hold elected officials accountable for the promises those officials make to voters, it seems to make people nervous.”
It’s unlikely that Choi will have much influence in the California Capitol, where Republicans struggle to get any major policies signed into law.
He thinks that the union that targeted Newman knew that and chose to risk helping elect a candidate it disagrees with in order to send a message to other Democrats about what happens when you oppose them.
“I think this was a power play to show how strong they are,” Choi said. “And what kind of penalty they can play against uncooperative legislators.”
www.latimes.com
Democratic state Sen. Josh Newman lost reelection to the state Senate as a labor union spent big to oppose him and helped Republican Steven Choi win.
Labor Movement Must Unite Working Class to Resist Corporate Agenda, Fight for Real Solutions
“Working people need an independent political organization to fight for our interests against the corrupt two-party system, and we call upon our locals and members, the rest of the labor movement, and our allies in other social movements to get serious about building a true political alternative, a labor party that can unite and speak for the working class.”
www.ueunion.org/political-action/2024/labor-movement-must-unite-working-class-to-resist-corporate…
NOVEMBER 6, 2024
Pittsburgh
STATEMENT OF THE UE OFFICERS
For over half of a century, working people in the U.S. have seen stagnating wages, worsening working conditions, the loss of good jobs, and constant increases in the cost of living. This is the result of corporations’ never-ending thirst to squeeze as many profits out of workers as possible. Throughout this time, both major parties have been complicit in this corporate assault. They have maintained their power, and a corrupt two-party system, by dividing the working class along lines of race, gender, and education. Frustration with the Democrats and their unwillingness to confront corporate power or offer real solutions to working people’s economic concerns led many working people to vote for Donald Trump on Tuesday, giving him the margin of victory.
While working people largely voted for Trump in the hope that he will improve the economy, Project 2025, the 900-page blueprint for a second Trump administration, will only worsen the economic problems working people face. One of the most dangerous political threats that the labor movement, and the working class, has faced in generations, Project 2025 proposes a variety of measures to weaken unions in the private sector, and bluntly states its objective to eliminate them completely in the public sector. It also seeks to weaken or eliminate virtually every law that protects workers, from OSHA to the minimum wage to laws against child labor.
Furthermore, we know from Trump’s first term that a Trump NLRB will seek to remove National Labor Relations Board protections from hundreds of thousands of graduate workers by classifying them as simply students, not workers, despite all of the paid labor that they provide to their universities. We also know from Trump’s history, and the rhetoric he has used throughout his campaign, that he will continue to demonize immigrants and encourage attacks on them — and we know that employers will take advantage of those attacks in order to silence immigrants who are union leaders.
Faced with these threats, the labor movement simply cannot afford to retreat into a defensive crouch as it did after the election of Republican presidents in 2001 and 2017. Our unions must be prepared not only to militantly defend workers, but also to lead a broad and militant social resistance to Trump and the Republican Congress. The policies that they will seek to enact, both legislatively and through executive branch action, will hurt everyone except the super-rich.
As the airport occupations in 2017, the mobilization to defend the Affordable Care Act in 2018, and the general strike threat in response to the federal government shutdown of 2018-19 all show, the anti-worker Republican agenda can be defeated, and the labor movement must step up to the plate and help lead such struggles.
The strike, labor’s ultimate weapon, will be a key part of working-class resistance to a second Trump administration. In the higher education industry, where UE is the leading union of private-sector graduate workers covered by the National Labor Relations Act, university administrators will be faced with a choice of whether or not to side with Trump’s attacks on graduate workers and immigrant students. Those administrators who take advantage of Trump’s policies to attack workers must be met with fierce resistance and militant action, including large strikes by majorities of workers. UE is prepared to engage in aggressive struggle to ensure that universities respect labor rights and that international graduate workers are not targeted. We call upon the entire labor movement to close ranks with this sector of the working class and any others that come under special attack.
Trump won because the Democrats have largely failed to clearly take the side of the working class, either while in office or on the campaign trail. While Harris claimed to be fighting for the “middle class,” she offered few concrete policy proposals beyond a vague claim that she would cut taxes. Had Harris campaigned vigorously on a platform of reining in corporate power, investing in green jobs, and providing universal healthcare, she would have given working people a more compelling reason to vote for her than simply opposing Trump.
Harris was also hurt by her unwillingness to condemn Israel’s year-long military assault on the people of Gaza, with a significant number of potential Democratic voters feeling that they could not vote to “endorse genocide.”
This election has demonstrated, once again, that the current two-party system is incapable of uniting working people around a vision for progress. We reiterate the position taken by UE’s General Executive Board in September: “Working people need an independent political organization to fight for our interests against the corrupt two-party system, and we call upon our locals and members, the rest of the labor movement, and our allies in other social movements to get serious about building a true political alternative, a labor party that can unite and speak for the working class.”
In the immediate future, the labor movement faces an existential threat. The most anti-union elements of our society will have the full power of the federal government at their disposal, and have made clear their intentions to destroy us. We must respond by uniting our membership and uniting our class; engaging in militant struggles, including strikes, to defend our rights and our unions; and leading a fight for a future that puts people over profits.
Carl Rosen
General President
Andrew Dinkelaker
Secretary-Treasurer
Mark Meinster
Director of Organization
Labor Movement Must Unite Working Class to Resist Corporate Agenda, Fight for Real Solutions
www.ueunion.org
Statement of the UE officers on the election For over half of a century, working people in the U.S. have seen stagnating wages, worsening working conditions, the loss of good jobs, and constant increa…
S.F. State University chief declares ‘financial emergency’ ahead of cuts to classes and teachers-Mass Layoffs Threatened
www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-state-declares-fiscal-emergency-19964419.php
San Francisco State President Lynn Mahoney declared a formal “financial emergency” Thursday ahead of class cuts and faculty reductions intended to slach the university budget by $25 million.
“Every unit across the university will be making hard reductions for 2025-26,” Mahoney wrote to the faculty on Thursday, noting that some programs will be “reduced, phased out, reorganized or discontinued.”
San Francisco State’s money problems are the result of steep enrollment declines.
The campus has lost 25% of its undergraduates in just five years, down by more than 6,500 students, to 19,337 undergrads.
The new cuts come on top of many reductions already imposed: the campus offers just three-quarters of the classes it did in 2019 — a loss of 1,080 courses — and employs 155 fewer nontenured instructors, known as lecturers.
A student is silhouetted while walking through the Humanities building at S.F. State University on Sept. 16. President Lynn Mahoney told faculty that she is confident the school “can make the curricular and staffing changes necessary.”
A student is silhouetted while walking through the Humanities building at S.F. State University on Sept. 16. President Lynn Mahoney told faculty that she is confident the school “can make the curricular and staffing changes necessary.”
Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle
Mahoney told faculty that she is confident “we can make the curricular and staffing changes necessary to serve students well and ensure a financially sustainable future for SF State.”
The president also noted that students are concerned the university will cut so many classes that they won’t be able to get into the prerequisites and other classes they need for their majors.
“As I write this, there are more than 35,000 open seats in classes for spring,” Mahoney wrote. “Please, please urge your students to register and let’s work together to get this done.”
The emergency declaration is a formality that allows faculty and other campus decision-makers to work together on deciding which cuts to make.
“From an Academic Senate perspective, the declaration of a financial emergency from the president is a step that initiates a shared governance process of reviewing the sustainability of academic programs,” Senate Chair Jackson Wilson, a professor in the Recreation, Parks, & Tourism department told the Chronicle.
In her letter, Mahoney noted that the state’s budget decisions are far from final — the 2025-26 state budget won’t become final until June — but early indications are that San Francisco State will not fare well.
If the state budget includes a 7.95% cut to California State University, as early discussions have suggested, the campus could receive nearly $21 million less than it would otherwise expect. Although the campus tends to receive more money each year than the prior year, its expenses exceed its revenue, Mahoney told the Chronicle in a recent interview.
Reach Nanette Asimov: nasimov@sfchronicle.com; Threads: @NanetteAsimov
S.F. State University chief declares ‘financial emergency’ ahead of cuts to classes and teachers
www.sfchronicle.com
SFSU President Lynn Mahoney declared a formal “financial emergency” ahead of class cuts and faculty reductions intended to reduce the budget by $25 million.
Pain of a shrinking S.F. State emerges in faculty’s accidental email thread
www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/pain-shrinking-sf-state-emerges-accidental-19937354.php
By Nanette Asimov,
Higher Education Reporter
Nov 26, 2024
Kiddoe Nwankwo, dean of San Francisco State’s College of Liberal & Creative Arts, sent a compassionate post-election message to faculty on Nov. 6. But her email opened a wound having nothing to do with national politics.
Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo, dean of San Francisco State’s College of Liberal & Creative Arts, sent a compassionate post-election message to faculty on Nov. 6. But her email opened a wound having nothing to do with national politics.
Chloe Jackman Photography
A San Francisco State dean’s compassionate, post-election message to faculty — meant to offer comfort — instead opened a wound having nothing to do with national politics.
“Our community is dealing with a tremendous range of emotions in the wake of the U.S. election results,” Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo, dean of the College of Liberal & Creative Arts, wrote to hundreds of faculty on Nov. 6. She encouraged them to “prioritize self-care and reflection” and thanked them for their “unwavering dedication.” And she suggested that, together, they “move forward with mutual respect, purpose and resilience and hope.”
The dean’s empathetic dispatch did not elicit a group hug.
San Francisco State is one of eight California State University campuses that are losing enrollment and have been ordered to reduce their class offerings — and instructors — as a result.
So when Dean Nwankwo inadvertently left visible the nearly 300 faculty email addresses in her communication, the instructors saw an opportunity to speak out about a reality more immediately overwhelming than the nation’s impending transformation: a university shrinking before their eyes.
With 19,337 undergraduates, San Francisco State has lost 25% of undergraduate enrollment in just five years — more than 6,500 students. Consequently, the campus is offering only three-quarters of the classes it did in 2019 — a loss of 1,080 courses — and employs 155 fewer non-tenured instructors, known as lecturers.
That blow, with more cuts expected this spring, is hitting hard at the College of Liberal & Creative Arts. Faculty used the sprawling email thread to vent at administrators — including Nwankwo — about the leaders’ perceived acquiescence to the devastation.
“I encourage you to use ‘reply all’ to let your voices be heard,” Diane Presler, an interactive design lecturer, responded to the group, prompting waves of agreement. “Yay on happy accident the dean has started a group chat with 292 faculty members! Woot woot.”
The thread, forwarded to the Chronicle, offers a rare look inside one of the city’s most important institutions of higher education at a pivotal moment.
“Not only is it impossible to take your inclusivity message seriously,” writing lecturer Christy Shick griped at Nwankwo, “it comes off as tone deaf to the massive upheaval and discontent.”
The College of Liberal & Creative Arts “is eliminating its seasoned front-line instructors even as students are arriving with dramatic skill challenges and learning loss,” wrote Jennifer Beach, an English lecturer. “You might be moving with ‘mutual respect, purpose, and resilience and hope’ — but it will not be together.”
Another referenced the “pain of watching our university become weaker.”
Tenured and tenure-track faculty joined in.
“All of us in English are feeling awful about losing our lecturer colleagues,” wrote Jenny Lederer, an associate professor of linguistics, noting that many have taught there for decades. “They have children, partners, rents, and mortgages. They have healthcare needs and retirement goals. They are our friends and support system.”
San Francisco State’s President Lynn Mahoney told the Chronicle that the number of faculty she employs depends on enrollment.
The campus routinely admits about 41,000 freshmen a year, yet the number who actually sign up has plunged. Mahoney blamed the loss on everything from San Francisco’s high cost of living to the dire warnings about the city promoted on right-wing TV. This year, freshman enrollment is 22% below projections.
ratio3x2_960.jpegratio3x2_960.jpegratio3x2_960.jpegThe College of Liberal & Creative Arts “is eliminating its seasoned front-line instructors even as students are arriving with dramatic skill challenges and learning loss,” wrote Jennifer Beach, an S.F. State English lecturer, seen here on Nov. 25.
The College of Liberal & Creative Arts “is eliminating its seasoned front-line instructors even as students are arriving with dramatic skill challenges and learning loss,” wrote Jennifer Beach, an S.F. State English lecturer, seen here on Nov. 25.
Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle
“I just want to bang my head against the wall,” the president said, noting that for the first time, would-be freshmen said they turned down the campus because of the city’s reputation.
While students from nearby Daly City are still enrolling, “others who are watching Fox News and hearing, ‘no, you’ll die’” in San Francisco, are not, she said.
Mahoney also pointed to demographic shifts — including fewer 18-year-olds — that have led to a drop in freshman enrollment across the country. Colleges have seen a 5% drop since last fall, the National Student Clearinghouse reported in October.
Mahoney said she knew about the faculty’s email thread.
“I don’t blame them for being angry,” she said. “They’re losing work. Some have been here for 20 years, and there’s nothing I can say to make that feel better.”
The president contrasted CSU’s approach with that of another local institution: City College of San Francisco, which has also lost vast numbers of students. After a brief period of downsizing in response to reduced enrollment, City College trustees have said they want to restore classes and rehire faculty, even as state officials have frozen the school’s funding until enrollment rises significantly.
“The difference between City College and San Francisco State is that my board — which is not an elected board — has made it clear since July that they expect (campus) presidents to make really hard decisions and reduce personnel,” Mahoney said.
“They said to expect votes of no confidence and that they’ll stand by us,” she added. “I don’t believe that City College has that kind of support from their board.”
ratio3x2_960.jpegratio3x2_960.jpegratio3x2_960.jpeg“I don’t blame them for being angry,” says San Francisco State University president Lynn Mahoney about the faculty on the email thread. “They’re losing work. Some have been here for 20 years, and there’s nothing I can say to make that feel better.”
“I don’t blame them for being angry,” says San Francisco State University president Lynn Mahoney about the faculty on the email thread. “They’re losing work. Some have been here for 20 years, and there’s nothing I can say to make that feel better.”
Benjamin Fanjoy/Special to the Chronicle
Although there is no hint of such a vote at San Francisco State, there is a rumor going around that Mahoney recently declared a financial emergency. She said she never did.
But last month, Mahoney alerted faculty about the possibility of unwelcome financial news to the CSU’s 23-campus system, including reports of a potential 7.95% cut to next year’s budget. She urged instructors to waste no time in lobbying state lawmakers against such a hit, which would “impact our ability to serve students.”
California’s annual budget cycle officially kicks off in January, when Gov. Newsom will propose his financial plan for 2025-26. Lawmakers then hash out counterproposals before settling on a final budget in June.
So it will be a long time before CSU — much less San Francisco State — knows what its financial picture looks like next year.
Nor is the outcome predictable. Since 2019, the state gave CSU a raise twice and cut its budget three times. All told, the $5.2 billion that the university got this year is 22% higher than what it got five years ago.
Unfortunately for San Francisco State, less of that bounty is trickling down to campuses that are failing to meet enrollment targets.
For those eight schools — including the Bay Area’s Cal State East Bay, Sonoma State and Cal Maritime — the CSU trustees are not offering the kind of empathy that San Francisco State’s faculty wished for on the email thread. Instead, they are showing the steely focus of money managers handling taxpayers’ dollars.
Even so, it’s unlikely that CSU will give the shrinking campuses less money than in prior years. This year, for example, San Francisco State got an additional $6.7 million than last year, 3% more, for a total of $239 million. But the campus would have gotten more if enrollment were rising.
ratio3x2_960.jpegratio3x2_960.jpegratio3x2_960.jpegS.F. State routinely admits about 41,000 freshmen a year, yet the number who actually sign up has plunged. This year, freshman enrollment was 22% below projections. President Mahoney blames high housing costs and negative portrayals of San Francisco.
S.F. State routinely admits about 41,000 freshmen a year, yet the number who actually sign up has plunged. This year, freshman enrollment was 22% below projections. President Mahoney blames high housing costs and negative portrayals of San Francisco.
Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle
Despite the increased allotment, campus expenses — particularly employee pay — are rising, Mahoney said, which is why she is cutting classes — and more lecturers.
The anger is evident on the faculty’s email thread, which also exposed fury about the campus’ handling of contract nonrenewals.
“I am going through hell,” shared a lecturer who is about to lose not only the job she has held since 2008 but also — she believes — much of the retirement benefit she expected.
“So not only am I out of a job next semester, but I’ve also been totally screwed out of my retirement,” she wrote, and urged colleagues to check their state CalPers accounts to ensure things are in order.
Sean Connelly, a humanities lecturer, said faculty should publicly “mark this catastrophe.”
“If we allow the mass firing of adjuncts to pass unnoticed by the wider community, the next round of cuts will only go more smoothly,” he wrote.
One lecturer linked San Francisco State’s pain to broader misery, from the election’s “norming of mutual distrust and disrespectful rhetoric,” to the wars in the Middle East and Europe.
“Let us not allow ourselves to become debased by treating our fellow colleagues without compassion and without the respect that they have worked so hard to earn, and that they deserve,” he concluded.
Dean Nwankwo did not appear to take the responses personally.
“Our colleagues responded the way they did because they are in pain and facing a terrifyingly uncertain future,” Nwankwo said. “Especially lecturer faculty who are being hit the hardest.”
Reach Nanette Asimov: nasimov@sfchronicle.com; Threads: @NanetteAsimov
Pain of a shrinking S.F. State emerges in faculty’s accidental email thread
www.sfchronicle.com
An SF State dean’s post-election email to faculty was meant to be compassionate. Instead, it opened a wound having nothing to do with national politics.