UC Riverside Faculty Association

In recent months, it has become clear universities are facing unprecedented challenges. The Trump Administration is using every lever to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy entire sectors of higher education. The sudden assault on our research funding, the integrity of our teaching, and disruption of our public service mission all pose existential threats to the University of California. We have also seen attacks on the privacy and due process rights of our faculty, students, and staff in recent weeks. This is a direct and sustained attack, impacting federal funding; ideological intrusion into academic affairs; and policing expression. Additionally, the UC system is facing brutal budget cuts and drastic changes to faculty workloads in a climate of eroding shared governance. To address these challenges, we must forcefully reassert our values as the leading public research institution in America and reassert the UC’s commitment to shared governance.

Make no mistake: it will take all of us. 

Through the Council on University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA), the Riverside Faculty Association (RFA) is working hard with Faculty Associations across the University of California system to defend our research integrity; guard academic freedom; demand UC support for our students and researchers; and reclaim our identity as a university for the public good.

We’ve heard from many of you that you want to do something. The RFA is here to make that happen, together. Here is a list of things we’ve been up to, upcoming actions, and some invitations to action. It will take all of us.

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UPCOMING ACTIONS

May 6^th 12:30pm – 2pm. Attend the Senate Town Hall on Responding Collectively to Unprecedented Challenges in Winston Chung Hall (WCH) 205/206 to raise your concerns. RSVP here.

May 6^th 3pm – 4pm. Attend the virtual RFA Post-Town Hall Debrief to recap and debrief what we heard at the town hall, share our reactions and consider what comes next. All faculty are welcome including those who are not RFA members and those who are not able to attend the Senate Town Hall. Please register for the RFA open meeting here.

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PAST ACTIONS

May 1^st, the RFA supported the May Day community/labor march and strike on campus. Our co-workers in AFSCME 3299 and UPTE are once again on strike in response to unfair labor practices by the UC, including the imposition of a system-wide hiring freeze. We encourage you to learn more about the specifics of their concerns here and here. We remind you that Senate faculty have a right to honor a picket line established by other university employees and to withhold their labor. UC may withhold pay for withheld labor, but it would be unlawful for the administration to dock additional pay or take other disciplinary action against faculty for exercising their protected rights.

April 30^th, the RFA led a CUCFA letter and petition raising concerns about the UCOP Cyber Security Mandate and demanding an extension on implementation. We circulated the letter and petition to UCR faculty.

April 17th National Day of Action for Higher Education. The RFA held a Town Hall, an open forum for faculty to discuss our urgent concerns and build solidarity. We supported virtual events highlighting attacks on public education and the ways we can fight back held by The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), with which the RFA is affiliated, and the Coalition for Action in Higher Education (CAHE).

April 8th, Kill the Cuts Rally. The RFA joined UC faculty and higher education workers across the country to stand up and demand NO cuts to education and life-saving research. This National Day of Action is in line with the nationwide effort to stop the cuts to higher education funding, organized in conjunction with the UAW, AAUP and other unions and organizations. https://www.killthecuts.org/

April 8th, the Riverside Faculty Association joined CUCFA and 30 faculty associations nationwide in an amici curae brief supporting a preliminary injunction sought by AAUP against the Trump administration. AAUP v. Rubio seeks to halt the ideologically-targeted deportations of students nationally. Our amici curae brief draws on the experiences of our faculty arguing that the Trump Administration’s ideological deportation policies profoundly harm our universities by endangering scholarly research, impeding our core educational mission, and policing campus activities related to speech and expression. We are proud to support AAUP’s work on this front and will give updates as the motion proceeds through the court.

April 6^th, the RFA signed on to a letter in support of academic freedom and UC support for students/researchers:

• A CUCFA letter demanding that UCOP immediately address the revocations of student/researcher visas and make strong support of students. The letter is open to everyone in the UC community: faculty, staff, students, and alumni: CUCFA letter

April 3^rd, The RFA signed on to a letter submitted by CUCFA to the University of California, the Office of the President (UCOP) condemning their disclosure of the personal and demographic information of over 850 UC faculty members after being subpoenaed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as part of its investigation of antisemitism at UC campuses.

March 4th, representatives from the statewide Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) lobbied the state government on behalf of faculty, alongside academic worker’s unions that represent most of the UC’s 300,000 workers. Representatives from Faculty Associations and the UC unions met with legislators and joined the March in March rally hosted by eleven unions throughout the country. Together we have made it clear that the University–the state’s largest employer, and an unparalleled engine of economic growth–must be supported, in full.

January 29^th, RFA spearheaded a CUCFA communication to faculty UC-wide regarding a UCOP committee to consider a common system-wide semester calendar. We disseminated a survey and collected responses which were forwarded to UCOP. Summary and long-form comments of this survey can be found here.

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These are perilous times, and we all must act to protect the public university if we are to keep it. If you have ideas, events, or concerns you would like addressed, the Riverside Faculty Association is your partner and ally. We will provide updates as we receive them.

Thank you, and we hope to see you May 6th!

The RFA Board

Dear UC Riverside faculty,

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Dear President Drake,

On October 26th, every UC employee received an Open Enrollment notice with new rates for healthcare benefits. UCOP presented these changes to UC Unions and the Council of UC Faculty Associations just three days before the start of Open Enrollment, leaving no opportunity for any input.

The increases in the employee health benefits share are unprecedented and alarming. Costs for healthcare benefits will be going up between 15% and 193% per month, depending on one’s plan and coverage. For example, if you currently pay for Kaiser for yourself and your spouse/partner, your cost will increase by 74% on January 1. An employee who insures themselves and their whole family (spouse/partner + children) through UC Health Savings Plan will see an increase of 171%. Every health benefit plan and coverage tier is affected, and these changes will impact the over 200,000 employees who receive benefits in the UC system.

Struck by the exorbitant increases, the UC unions pressed for answers. UCOP representatives cited inflation, deferred preventative care during the pandemic, rising drug costs, and clinical workforce shortages as root causes for these price increases. While these are all real issues impacting healthcare costs everywhere, when pushed for details about how prices were negotiated and set for UC employees, UCOP’s answers were unsatisfactory and lacked transparency.

For example, the cost to employees is determined by the insurance company rate increase less the employer share contribution. UC did not provide information about either the rate increase or the employer contribution, so there is no way to tell if UC is paying its share of the increased cost. But other sources indicate that Kaiser’s rate increase was probably about 15% this year[1], which would mean that UC reduced its share of contributions by about 20%.

We object to these unreasonable increases in our health benefit costs and UC’s secrecy and nontransparency in devising and announcing these policies. Your approach serves not only to degrade and disrespect UC’s academic employees but also contributes to the ongoing severe erosion of UC’s teaching and research mission. You will be hearing more from us, the people in the UC community who are now learning how their lives and livelihoods will be devastated by the poorly warranted policy changes to our healthcare that UCOP has sprung on them.

cc: The UC Regents

On March 19, 2023, CUCFA endorsed the following letter, which will be sent to President Drake, UC Chancellors, and Board of Regents calling for the inclusion of caste within the University of California’s anti-discrimination policy. To join this call, sign here by April 10, 2023:

Dear President Drake, UC Chancellors, and Board of Regents,

We, University of California faculty, staff, and students, are writing to request the inclusion of caste within the University of California’s anti-discrimination policy to further solidify the UC’s commitment to diversity and equity and ensure appropriate protections for caste oppressed students, staff, faculty, and community members. With the current UC-wide anti-discrimination policy undergoing revision, it is important that the updated policy explicitly includes caste to better address the ongoing caste discrimination across the University of California.

Caste is a structure of oppression that affects over 1 billion people across the world. As one of the oldest systems of oppression in the world, the caste system is a structure of graded inequality based on notions of purity and pollution. Caste is determined at birth and affects all aspects of life, including your right to human dignity, where you can worship, where you can live, who you can marry, and your prospects for educational and career advancement. To this day, caste-oppressed peoples continue to experience profound injustices including socioeconomic inequalities, usurpation of their land, rights, and brutal violence at the hands of the dominating castes.

Caste is prevalent across various faith communities across South Asia, and also transgresses regional and national boundaries to be found globally across communities part of the diaspora. Similar forms of caste systems also exist in various non-South Asian communities, with some examples being the caste system in Japan that marks the Burakumin caste as untouchable by birth, and the casta system across Latin America.

In the US, caste impacts over 5.5 million South Asians and has infiltrated a broad range of spaces and industries from education spaces to the tech sector to religious centers. According to the 2016 survey “Caste in the United States” produced by Equality Labs, 25% of Dalits reported facing verbal or physical assault based on their caste in the US, one in three Dalit students report being discriminated against during their education in the US, two out of three Dalits surveyed reported being treated unfairly at their workplace in the US, 60% of Dalits report experiencing caste-based derogatory jokes or comments in the US, and 20% of Dalit respondents report feeling discriminated at a place of business because of their caste.

Universities in the US are no exception. Caste-oppressed students and faculty are subjected to discrimination, bullying, and humiliation. According to the preliminary findings of the 2022 Caste in Higher Education Survey administered by the National Academic Coalition for Caste Equity (NACCE) and Equality Labs, 4 in 5 caste-oppressed students, staff, and faculty reported experiencing caste-discrimination at the hands of their dominant caste peers. Further, 75% of them did not report caste-based discrimination in their universities or colleges because caste was not added as a protected category and/or their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion departments lacked caste competency due to a lack of provisions and training. Given the prevalence of caste discrimination, leading universities and colleges across the US have amended their anti-discrimination policy to add caste as a protected category, including Colby College, Brown University, Brandeis University, and, most notably, the California State University system in 2022. Recently, Seattle also amended its anti-discrimination policy and became the first city in the nation to ban caste discrimination.

The call to ban caste discrimination has also been ongoing in the University of California system, with UC Davis becoming the first UC campus to add caste to its anti-discrimination policy, and UC Berkeley’s ASUC Senate unanimously passing SR 21/22-029 urging administration to amend the anti-discrimination policy to include caste in order to create equitable learning opportunities for all students.

We call on the University of California to also recognize caste within its anti-discrimination policy and commit to protecting caste oppressed peoples against discrimination on the basis of caste. Caste-based discrimination is an urgent civil and human rights issue that requires immediate action and we request you to recognize the humanity and the reality of caste oppressed faculty, staff, and students. Given UC’s commitment to ensuring a safe and equal working and learning environment for all, adding caste as a protected category will affirm the university’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and support for those most marginalized.

To support adding caste as a protected category, please sign your name and affiliation below by April 10, 2023.

The Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA), in collaboration with University Council-American Federation of Teachers (UC-AFT), which represents over 6,000 UC Unit 18 faculty and librarians, is collecting faculty and lecturer signatures on a letter we intend to send to President Drake and UC Regents later this month. The letter is pasted below, and if you are interested in adding your name to it, click here.

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Dear President Drake and UC Regents,

We, the undersigned members of the UC community, stand firmly against any move on the part of the UC Office of the President (UCOP) to impose the costs of UAW-ratified contracts on the already strained finances of departments, research centers, libraries and faculty. The result would be a diminished quality of research and education for undergraduates and graduates. We urge campus administrators, UCOP, the California legislature, Governor Newsom, and federal granting agencies to recommit to fully funding public higher education.

On December 23rd, 2022, UAW members across the UC system ratified contracts with much-needed and significantly increased pay and benefits, including childcare subsidies, increased access to healthcare, family leave, and transit benefits. These overdue contracts improve the lives of UAW members—our students and postdocs—who have long endured inadequate pay and benefits. Despite numerous warnings by public education advocates, the UC system has enjoyed these lowered labor costs for decades. It is only now facing the question of how to pay for these much-needed improvements.

The University is seeking to impose these costs on departments, research centers, and faculty PIs, leading to a reduction of graduate student appointments, an increase in the already high number of undergraduates per discussion section, and a correspondingly negative impact on course curriculum, undergraduate assignments, and grading. This reduction also weakens currently funded research and allows fewer future funded research opportunities for graduate students. TA and GSR appointments are central components of funding for graduate students, and both are major inputs into the research and educational work of the institution. Given these anticipated effects, the costs of the new contracts negotiated by UCOP cannot be borne by departments, research centers, and faculty PIs. Indeed, by pushing the costs downwards in this way, the university is both effectively canceling the gains of this historic strike and negatively impacting the research and education mission of the UC.

We refuse this divide-and-conquer tactic and stand alongside our undergraduate and graduate students, department chairs, and deans in insisting on a funding model that advances the UC system’s fundamental mission of education and research. We refuse the imposition of unilateral, punitive austerity as the university’s response to a strike by academic workers against poverty wages.

We know the UC system has funds at its disposal and can work to raise additional public funds at both the state and federal levels to cover the costs of the new UAW contracts. UC leadership must not only reallocate administrative budgets but also robustly appeal to state legislators and federal grant agencies for larger budget appropriations. We expect to see a budget and planning process that allocates funds to the central missions of teaching and research and underwrites the short-term and long-term costs of the improved contract. The strike, the largest academic labor action in US history and the largest across any industry in the US last year, has highlighted the urgent need to reprioritize educational goals above financial goals.

We intend to take our concerns to the Academic Senate, the UC Regents, the California Governor and legislature, and the media. We do so to advocate for public education and to stand with our undergraduate and graduate students and junior colleagues as we all work hard to carry out that mission.

Following today’s campus directive requiring the submission of self-attestation forms by those faculty who participated in strike-related activities last quarter, we write to offer further clarification and guidance from the Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) on how best to respond.

Below we append CUCFA’s advice on faculty-protected rights in relation to UC’s issuing of these attestation forms, along with a cease-and-desist letter sent to UC Labor Relations. Links to each of these are below.

https://cucfa.org/2023/01/ucops-attestation-form-for-faculty/
https://cucfa.org/2023/01/uc-interference-with-faculty-protected-rights/

Please read CUCFA’s arguments as to why “UC’s attempt to survey faculty about whether or not they honored the picket line is unlawful, and you are not required to submit these forms.”

In light of the resolution of the recent historic strike by academic workers, we write to share with you the following update regarding grading that remains to be completed for the fall 2022 quarter.

The Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA), in collaboration with UC-AFT, UAW 2865, and the UC Santa Cruz Faculty Association (the only legal bargaining unit representing Senate Faculty in the UC system), sent the following letter to Letitia Silas, Executive Director of Labor Relations at the UC Office of the President (UCOP), regarding the need for centrally funded compensation for readers and/or lecturers to complete Fall grading. The letter reminds UCOP that Senate faculty members and lecturers have no obligation to volunteer to pick up struck labor required to complete Fall 2022 grade submission, and calls on UC to provide funds to hire readers to complete that work. The full text of the letter is pasted below, and shared online at:

https://cucfa.org/2023/01/uaw-ucaft-cucfa-scfa-return-to-work-grading/

Sincerely,
The Board of the RFA

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January 4, 2023

Letitia Silas
Executive Director, Labor Relations
UC Office of the President
1111 Franklin Street
Oakland, CA 94607

CC: President Michael V. Drake

Delivered via Email to: Letitia.Silas@ucop.edu

Dear Labor Relations Executive Director Silas,

We write collectively as representatives of UAW 2865, UC-AFT, CUCFA, and SCFA. Due to the UAW’s strike over UC’s unfair labor practices during contract negotiations, a significant amount of the labor required to complete Fall 2022 grade submission remains outstanding.
The workers represented by our unions and associations understand their rights and protections. Senate faculty members and lecturers have no obligation to volunteer to pick up labor struck by ASEs employed in their classes. Readers and teaching assistants in UAW 2865 enjoyed legal protections during their strike, and their appointments for the Fall Quarter terminated on December 31 at the latest while the strike was active.
Should the University require additional labor for submitting any Fall 2022 grades, it can hire readers (including those who previously served as TAs for the class) under the terms of the new contract and/or hire lecturers at a rate set by negotiation between UC-AFT and the university administration. Further, given that departments were not responsible for the strike’s duration and/or resolution, we also expect this labor to be centrally funded. Finally, we ask that the administration communicate a process for accessing these funds as soon as possible so that course sponsoring agencies can hire replacement workers and instructors are not pressured to take on labor beyond their customary duties.
We are willing to meet to discuss this matter further.

Yours,
Rafael Jaime, UAW 2865 President
Katie Rodger, UC-AFT President
Constance Penley, CUCFA President
Jessica Taft, SCFA Co-Chair