Do you want to support Faculty fighting for rights, justice and equity? Are you interested in or skilled in reading, interpreting and applying policy? Then consider joining our Faculty Rights Committee!!!
How much work would this be?
We’re working to build out the committee in order to make sure that none of its members need to take on a heavy burden, and to refine our mechanisms to ensure that collectively we’re staying on top of faculty requests for help, sharing essential information, and refining our strategies together. I can’t convert that to a firm hours/week ceiling, but I’m hopeful that it will end up averaging a few hours per week at most, and less than that most weeks.
What kind of work would this be?
The work of the FRC includes activities like:
-Helping other faculty members file grievances when they feel that they have been harmed by a violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) or of University policy
-Helping other faculty members to mount arguments for more equitable pay
-Helping other faculty members to frame rebuttals to RTP or other evaluations — or to craft their narratives for such evaluations in the context of the policies that are supposed to guide these evaluations
-Helping other faculty members (such as department chairs) understand the CBA and/or University policy to avoid accidentally creating grievable situations
Generally, this is work aimed at making our University function more fairly for the Unit 3 faculty it employs — whether or not those faculty are CFA members. A lot of it is one-on-one work, but if you enjoy giving workshops, there’s an opportunity to do some of that. Some of the work of the FRC is oriented around understanding the rules, but some of it is oriented around persuading the University to treat compliance with the CBA and policy as a floor, rather than a ceiling.
In addition to regular check-ins the rest of the campus FRC, our CFA Field Rep and the CFA statewide Faculty Rights folks will be a resource to help you learn how to do this important work.
I hope you’ll consider this invitation (and maybe even suggest a colleague or two you think might also be interested). Please don’t hesitate to ask me any questions whose answers might make a difference to your decision!
Best,
Janet D. Stemwedel – Chair, Faculty Rights Committee (facrightschair.sj@calfac.org)
Shamako Noble – CFA SJSU Field Rep (snoble@calfac.org)
