UC-AFT President's response to Gray Program time-limited appointments

To read the Dean's notice and description of the Gray program, click on the link immediately below, or at the bottom of this post.

http://berkeleyaft.org/sites/berkeleyaft.org/files/Gray%20Lecturership%2...

Here is UC-AFT President Bob Samuels' response to the notice: 

July 19, 2010

Associate Dean Susan Schweik

Arts and Humanities Division

College of Letters and Sciences

201 Campbell Hall

Berkeley, CA 94720-2920

Dear Associate Dean Schweik:

As President of UC-AFT, I am deeply concerned about the new Gray Lectureship positions. 

The Unit 18 MOU states the following: “The parties also recognize that legitimate practices or programs or needs may exist, or be established (including time-limited positions) that may have an effect of limiting pre-six year lecturer access to Continuing Appointments. Nevertheless, the University will not engage in activities or establish practices and/or programs for the purpose of denying to pre-six year NSF access to Continuing Appointments” (Article 7a.C.1).  When I was involved with the negotiations over this language, we made sure that the University could only create time-limited positions “insofar as such programs adhere to their stated academic goals and pass through regular consultative processes” (7a.C.2.a).  In our discussion of what would constitute legitimate academic goals, we specifically considered the idea of using time-limited positions as a way of employing recent Ph.D. graduates, however we concluded that this type of job program does not rise to the level of “academic goals.” 

Another related issue is that our contract negotiations directly discussed UC Davis’ desire to use the term “Teaching Fellow” to cover two-year time-limited positions for recent Ph.D. graduates at Davis.  We insisted that if someone is being compensated primarily to teach, then that person should be considered to be a lecturer and should be given the full rights of a lecturer.  This means that the path to a continuing appointment should not be blocked by a time-limited position.

In short, we are very skeptical that your program fulfills the requirements of the contract. I write today to inform you that while UC-AFT will not impede the implementation of the Gray lectureships at this point in time, we do not see our acceptance of these new Gray lectureship positions for the next two academic years as setting any precedent for time-limited positions at Berkeley or any other campus. 

UC-AFT understands this program to be a one-time event established through a one-time allocation of special funds to serve the current backlog of third- and fourth-year undergraduate students who have not met the R & C requirement, and we believe that the program has to be clearly monitored.   If we see that other school, departments, or programs are moving to enact a similar use of time-limited positions, we will grieve the infraction.  We will also watch to make sure that these Gray Lecturers do not displace other lecturers and that the funding for this program is not regularized in any fashion or extended beyond two years.

Sincerely,

Bob Samuels

President, University Council-AFT

cc:  Debra Harrington, UC-Berkeley Labor Relations

       Kathryn Klar, President, UC-AFT Local 1474