By Robert Hennig
As a non-tenured member of the faculty at UCLA, my job is to teach undergraduate courses. All told, I love my job and have given my best to approximately five thousand UCLA students. There are about 400 lecturers like me on UCLA’s campus and together we teach roughly half of all undergraduate classes.
The last thing we as lecturers want is to hurt our students. The satisfaction we have in teaching and the relationships we have with so many remarkable students is what brings us back to UCLA despite all the frustrations.
Most of us do an excellent job. On the whole we are conscientious and gifted teachers who truly care about student learning.
Unfortunately, we are also vastly underpaid relative to other teachers. Comparably qualified teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District or in community colleges often earn fifty percent more than a lecturer in the UC system. The gap in pay only widens as you gain experience as a teacher at the UC.
So we are trying to schedule a job action that would minimize class disruption and loss of learning time. We are striking at Berkeley this week over the insulting way the UC administration has handled its bargaining with us. A lecturer’s strike on the UCLA campus is a real possibility for the fall quarter.
We can no longer ignore the impossible position the UC administration has put us in. UC lecturers labor with little job security. The university has told us we are at will employees for the first six years of our employment, meaning we can be let go for any reason or no reason at all, no matter how good our teaching is.
At UCLA we believe many lecturers have not been renewed purposely to prevent them from gaining any job security or to save a few thousand dollars in salary. Many of UCLA's best teachers are no longer here because UCLA values neither their skill nor their commitment.
Chancellor Carnesale has refused to become involved in the lecturer’s negotiations or to authorize substantial improvements for lecturers that would resolve our endless contract dispute. Carnesale seems more interested in preserving a broken system rather than working with us to create a system that benefits the quality of undergraduate education.
Carnesale’s actions are outrageous. But he reflects the dismissive attitude so prevalent at each of the campuses. Lecturers are absolutely necessary to run undergraduate education, yet they are treated as if they are easily expendable.
Lecturers want to settle a new contract, but we want a fair one. We are seeking significant changes that not only benefit lecturers but improve the quality of undergraduate instruction. The UC administration has sought to maintain a system that hurts both lecturers and students.
Carnesale and other UC officials have said they do not have the money for improvements that would cost far less than one tenth of one percent of the UC budget. This is instructional money that already has been authorized by the State of California and that a recent audit of the UC system found to have been laundered by the administration for other purposes including administration salaries.
System-wide, UC lecturers authorized striking with almost 90 percent of the vote. As a union, we are actively preparing for job actions on each of the UC campuses.
All of this has an impact on the quality of undergraduate education at UCLA. First-rate lecturers leave to teach elsewhere because on this campus they are not respected and valued. Undergraduate students suffer by having less capable instructors in our place. Overworked lecturers cannot devote the time and attention to each student they would like.
As a student, please understand how much the quality of lecturers directly impacts your education. The lack of importance the UC system places on undergraduate teachers signifies the lack of importance the UC system puts on undergraduate education.
Hennig is a lecturer in the department of political science and a member of the University Council-American Federation of Teachers bargaining team for contract negotiations.