Attend Open Bargaining, Thursday 4/13 at 2-3:30PM MUB 261 & then Support Recalling Laid Off Tenured/TT Faculty at the BOT Meeting Thursday 4/13 at 4:30 PM

Please join us tomorrow for our second in-person bargaining session with the District in negotiations for your new contract. Help us hold the District’s bargaining team accountable by showing them that we are paying close attention to their behavior at the bargaining table.

Afterwards, join your colleagues in making public comment at the Board of Trustees Budget and Audit Subcommittee meeting in support of Trustees Susan Solomon and Anita Martinez’s “Resolution Supporting a Plan to Recall all Remaining Full Time Tenured and Tenure Track Faculty Laid Off in May 2022.”

See agenda items 5.A, which “supports the Chancellor in developing, adopting, and implementing a plan to recall all remaining full time tenured and tenure track faculty laid off in May 2022 as soon as possible but in no case later than for the 2026 spring or summer semester.” Item 5.B speaks to Classified layoffs.  

From Computer Networking & Information Technology, to Biotech, to Chemistry, to English, to Broadcast Electronic Media Arts, to Environmental Horticulture/Floristry, & so many more, crucial programs that our students depend on have been devastated by the unnecessary layoffs last May. The layoff of these faculty members was an attack on tenure, a bedrock of academic freedom in the United States, and it was a decision made without budgetary justification.

Comments can be made in person or by phone. You can sign up to make public comment by following instructions here. You’ll need to sign up no later than 4pm. See item 3 on agenda for details.

We urge the Trustees to pass this resolution in defense of our students and programs, and we encourage all faculty to make comments in support of this timely resolution. Your AFT 2121 Bargaining Team’s Sunshine Document (see here) includes a commitment to seek to “restore positions and bring back laid off faculty,” and we are encouraged to see the Board of Trustees taking steps to support this effort.

History of May Day Film Screening at Mission Campus Monday 4/24 at 7pm in Room 109

We Mean to Make Things Over: A History of May Day is a new half-hour documentary video exploring how May Day became a workers’ holiday all over the world except in the United States—despite the fact that the events that inspired the holiday occurred here. At a time when celebrating May Day is making a comeback, the American labor movement is showing renewed militancy, and public support for labor is at a half century peak, the appearance of We Mean to Make Things Over is extremely timely.

Using historical images, contemporary illustrations by Berkeley artist Jos Sances, and animation by L.A.-based animator Paul Zappia, We Mean to Make Things Over is an educational and entertaining tour of a long-suppressed story from American working-class history. Writer/Director Fred Glass will introduce the screening and answer questions afterward. Fred teaches labor history and is the retired communications director of the California Federation of Teachers. We Mean to Make Things Over recently won first place in the educational video category of the 2022 International Labor Communications Association awards contest.