The current crisis has brought into focus the extreme precarity that contingent faculty live with year in and year out. UC-AFT (the union that represents UC lecturers) is circulating a pledge that asks ladder rank faculty at the University of California to demonstrate solidarity in a very concrete way, and the Davis Faculty Association Board is endorsing this pledge.
We are asking individual faculty members to commit to and advocate for the following:
* Rehire currently employed or previously employed lecturers to teach courses that they are qualified for before hiring anyone new. (This includes retaining an existing lecturer before hiring a recent grad.)
* Advocate for multi-year appointments within our departments for our pre-continuing lecturer colleagues. (Currently allowed in our contract)
* Apply now for exemptions to the hiring freeze so that lecturers can receive timely reappointments and thoroughly prepare to teach in fall 2020. (Not all campuses have hiring freezes, but as far as we can tell, all campuses are planning on making very last minute lecturer appointments.)