JUST SAY NO: Do not voluntarily increase your workload.
Dear faculty,
Yesterday, the following message was sent to faculty chairs and directors, and we would like to convey the same message to faculty campus-wide. While we understand that deadlines for may have varied among different colleges, we urge you to support our faculty chairs and directors, and advocate to preserve and improve student learning conditions.
In times of uncertainty, our human survival instincts may urge us to make decisions that do not serve us - or anyone, especially our students. Last Friday, you all received an email from the Office of the Provost announcing the plan to increase course sizes, identify how to address low enrolled degree programs, limit and make changes on how assigned time is granted as strategies to meet the budget deficit. Our union has since challenged these plans as we believe they will unreasonably increase workload; thus impacting faculty working conditions, and has issued a demand to meet and confer over the proposed changes. We will be filing a grievance over the intent to unreasonably increase workload,
Faculty, CFA urges you to just say no. You have the right to refuse to raise course caps in this egregious manner. Our collective bargaining agreement calls for consent from faculty to increase class size, which exists in circumstances that are not meant to impact your overall workload, but meet impermanent student needs. For non-instructional faculty, any changes to your regular working conditions must be made upon consultation. Do not voluntarily give up your rights, or take on more work.
In union,
CFA-LA Faculty Rights
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Dear department chairs and all colleagues,
Following the memo sent out last Friday afternoon by our outgoing/acting and incoming Provosts, department chairs and division and program directors have come under pressure to expand course caps at the top-down, unilateral dictate of upper administration.
This is a violation of our Collective Bargaining Agreement, in which our Workload article (Article 20:https://www.calfac.org/contract-2022-2025/#article-20), prohibits excessive and unreasonable assignments, and names the right to consultation over our workloads.
This is also a violation of shared governance principles, an affront to the hard work of our Academic Senators and curriculum committees, and a signal of our university administrators’ feeble commitments to the principle of shared governance.
Faculty - especially chairs and directors, CFA urges you to say no. You have the right to refuse to raise course caps in this egregious manner. It’s bad for our students, who deserve high impact practices, bad for faculty who are forced to overwork, and disproportionately harms lecturer faculty, who teach the majority of our students, yet whose jobs and health care are gravely threatened in these times of manufactured austerity.
Please take these actions. Time is of the essence:
Send an email to your dean or associate dean refusing to raise course caps this way. You might say:
“In my role as department chair, I cannot make or authorize raising the caps for these classes. To my knowledge, the university administration did not consult with the Academic Senate, the Senate Executive Committee, the University Curriculum Committee, or GE Subcommittee before decreeing these changes to course caps. Additionally, CFA has issued a meet to demand and confer over the announced changes, and they have not reached an agreement
The university administration does not have the authority unilaterally to change course caps or "class size" (the term used in Curriculog). I will not change the cap/class size unless this change is approved by the appropriate faculty representative bodies at the department, college, and university levels, with clear guidelines distinguishing between courses with different class size numbers.”Forward any such correspondence to Marcelle Alvarado (malvarado@calfac.org) and Molly Talcott (mtalcott@calfac.org). We are preparing a grievance and are acquiring evidence. We cannot advocate for you or your department without you.
Sign the petition against the proposed budget cuts and protect faculty jobs, and share with your department faculty: https://forms.gle/R3su4Fc5A5deydr88
Talk to your colleagues across departments about why you’re taking this principled action on behalf of students and colleagues.
Share with your colleagues this week’s faculty rights tip here.
Get involved! Complete this Member Action form: https://forms.gle/BS5LazmhxPojE2s2A
Together, we are powerful. Let’s be and stay in principled solidarity with each other and our students. Thank you for your powerful, integral work at Cal State LA.
In solidarity,
CFA-LA Faculty Rights