SCFA Files Unfair Labor Practice Charge re: union access to meetings

As your union, we take seriously our responsibility to provide you with legally accurate information. To that end, as we communicated in our email of May 19, the SCFA has been and remains available to meet with individuals or groups of faculty, as well as departments, to listen to colleagues’ concerns and to discuss faculty rights and responsibilities. Our representatives were invited to several departments in this capacity and yet on May 22 SCFA Co-chairs Kimberly Lau and Jessica Taft received a formal notice from the UCSC Director of Employee and Labor Relations prohibiting SCFA representatives “from attending department meetings to answer questions about union business, including questions related to the union’s position on the strike.” For the administration to attempt to regulate speech in this way is unprecedented, and this discriminatory prohibition constitutes an unfair labor practice. We have accordingly filed a formal Unfair Labor Practice charge with the Public Employee Relations Board.