As the exclusive senate-faculty bargaining unit at UCSC, the SCFA is empowered to bargain with the administration over terms and conditions of senate-faculty employment at UCSC (not including system-wide matters). On February 18, the SCFA delivered a request to bargain with EVC Kletzer over potential plans to discipline hundreds of striking graduate students. This type of bargaining is known as “effects bargaining”, and holds that if the effects of an administrative action, whether or not that action is within the administration’s rights, would significantly impact our ability to do our jobs, then the administration is obliged to give notice to and allow bargaining with the SCFA about its proposed actions. Below is the text of our letter requesting bargaining. We will post updates as appropriate.
February 18, 2020
Dear EVC Kletzer,
On February 14, 2020, you issued a communication to all faculty stating that graduate students who did not submit Fall 2019 grades by February 21, 2020 would not receive or be dismissed from spring-quarter TA appointments. SCFA disagrees that depriving graduate students of their paying work is appropriate in these circumstances. It can only worsen the affordability crisis they face.
Your letter also states that the University will unilaterally develop “[c]ontingency plans . . . to mitigate the issues this will create once we understand who has returned to work and who has not.” Faculty foresee that the University’s plans to deny graduate students spring-quarter TA appointments will inevitably impact faculty workloads and other terms and conditions of work. Instances of this have already and continue to come to SCFA’s attention. Your February 14, 2020 letter for example urges faculty to engage with graduate students on the administration’s behalf, pressuring already busy faculty to take on additional administrative work.
This is to make clear SCFA’s demand to bargain over the effects of the University’s plans, on or after February 21, to withhold TA appointments from graduate students. This is also to note and object that the University did not provide SCFA with formal notice. You have only issued a communication to all faculty, stating that the University would deal with the effects unilaterally, without directly notifying SCFA and requesting bargaining. We ask that you come to the table to bargain in good faith with SCFA.
Please provide us with the University’s availability for bargaining sessions over the remainder of the academic term, starting as soon as possible. SCFA proposes the following dates and times for initial bargaining sessions: Friday, February 21, 12-3PM, Friday, February 28, 12-3PM, Friday, March 6, 12-3PM, Friday, March 13, 12-3PM, Friday, March 20, 12-3PM, Thursday, April 2, 1-4PM, Thursday, April 9, 1-4PM, Thursday, April 23, 1-4PM.
Sincerely,
Chris Connery, Deborah Gould, and Ronnie Lipschutz
SCFA Co-Chairs