by Mary Ann Mason
I am now in my second year as President of the UC Council of Faculty Associations, the umbrella organization which unites all seven campus Faculty Associations and maintains a lobbyist in Sacramento. But my colleagues still don’t get it. One faculty member, whom I persuaded to join the Berkeley Faculty Association last year, marched up to me in the mail room with the latest bulletin from the Office of the President. “Look!” he said, “everything’s fixed, we have a good budget now, the times of trouble are over. You and your Council can retire.” I would have liked to respond that the Council was responsible for, at last, a decent budget from the legislature, but I did, in all fairness, concede some credit to the economy.
What I did tell him very forcefully was that no other group is solely advocating for UC faculty in Sacramento and that the budget is only one front on which we fight. Then I stood in the doorway of the mailroom and did not let him escape until I shared with him the highlights of what the Faculty Associations have done for him lately.
“Did you read about the unexpected windfall for the libraries?” I asked. “The Council of UC Faculty Associations lobbied long and hard, with others, to achieve a major victory; gaining an additional $10 million in funding to help restore the depleted collections of the libraries. This is in addition to the $3 million for the digital library that had already been requested by the Office of the President. Many Faculty Association members participated, along with our new lobbyist, Jim Bruner of Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe, putting pressure on our local representatives to achieve this victory and to insert budget language that requires UC to submit a multi-year library funding plan to the legislature.”
“Have you noticed the bulge in your paycheck? The budget this year included a COLA of 2% plus a parity salary increase of 2.5%. This parity increase should finally bring us back to parity (which means our salaries fall in the middle) with our comparison 8 institutions. Reaching parity, after the serious slump in the early 90’s, has taken five years. This has been a major priority of the Council. We have carefully watch-dogged the progress of this movement in the legislature and in the Office of the President toward restoring our salaries. We have been vigilant to efforts to further delay the onset of the effective date of the increases each year and have lobbied actively to quash these efforts.”
“Are you perfectly happy with your health coverage?” I asked. ” I suspect, like most faculty you are critically concerned about the quality and shifting nature of our health care plans. The Council has pushed for maintaining a triple option plan, providing better access to primary care physicians and offering all UC faculty the opportunity to use UC medical school faculty and facilities. We also advocate better out of town coverage for our peripatetic faculty and an affordable Medigap plan for UC retirees with Medicare coverage. Our representatives are actively participating in the negotiations for the year 2000 health care contracts.” “Do you own your lectures, or does the university? Do you want your courses to become freeware on the net? We are carefully monitoring the situation on each campus with regard to possible infringements of faculty intellectual property rights and copyrights. Our staff is fully engaged in researching these issues .The Council published a newsletter devoted to Technology in Higher Education: Opportunities and Threats and will continue to defend faculty rights in this volatile area.”
“Do you want some departments to be able to hire new faculty solely with private money? The Council has challenged the Office of the President’s memo to allow private, rather than state funding to support ladder rank faculty. We insist that there must be Senate review and approval of positions supported with non-19900 funds and adequate oversight and management of funds used for long-term support of faculty positions. We have urged the President to gain more faculty input from Senate committees and other forums before irrevocably changing the nature of the faculty culture.”
As he tried to push his way past me in the doorway I attempted to quickly list the wide range of other activities the Council has pursued lately. I told him that we had severely criticized the text of the proposed APM changes on termination for incompetence for failing to define incompetence adequately; how we had pointed out the alarming rise in part-time faculty, and how we were helping the medical school faculty in their efforts to make their compensation plan fairer.
He finally escaped into the hallway and yelled back at me from down the corridor. “Okay, Okay, just keep those good paychecks coming.”