At the beginning of each new term during the academic year, teaching assignments for lecturers are often in flux until the last minute. With administrations both threatening and enacting cuts on many campuses, it is a terribly challenging time for both lecturers and department chairs, as lecturers experience the frustrations of precarity in employment, while chairs often feel caught between a rock and a hard place, doing their best with management’s imposition of shoestring budgets. 

Article 12.29b of our Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) governs the assignment of classes during the academic year (that is, in terms other than Fall). 

This article provides protection for long-term lecturers. The administration must follow the order of appointments specified in this article. 

If you are a lecturer who has lost classes in the Winter or Spring term or if you are a department chair making last-minute class assignments of available work, we urge you to review Article 12.29b of our CBA and contact your campus CFA chapter faculty rights representative if you have questions. 

The primary difference between 12.29b and 12.29a (which governs Fall terms) is that lecturers on 1-year appointments in Winter and Spring terms have a higher preference for work than do term-appointed lecturers, which means that their entitlement base must be met before providing careful consideration to term-appointed lecturers.  

Lecturers with a 3-year or 1-year time-base entitlement have enforceable contractual rights. Lecturers with either of these appointments (3-year or 1-year) must have their time-base entitlements met before any work is assigned to incumbent lecturers who are lower in the preference-for-work order.  

With frustratingly uncertain budgets and misguided administrative decisions bearing down upon us, guard your entitlement rights, and contact your campus CFA faculty rights representative if you have questions about your entitlement rights for Spring (or Winter) 2026. 

Your CFA chapter can, for example, request information to make sure your department is following the order of assignment in 12.29b. You can also take proactive steps to inform your chair – early and often – about the courses you are qualified to teach (including those you haven’t yet taught, but feel qualified to teach).   

CFA leaders are here to support you, and we are fighting at the bargaining table, in Sacramento, and across our communities for the reversal of CSU management’s practices of shortchanging students by slashing and burning up our course schedules. Join us in this movement, and be in touch when you need support! 

  • If you have questions about a faculty rights tip or would like to suggest a tip please write us with the subject line “Faculty Rights Tip.” 
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