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Faculty Rights Tips

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Faculty Rights Tips

Find below all the Faculty Rights Tips that have appeared in CFA Headlines, CFA’s weekly email newsletter.

You are welcome to subscribe to CFA Headlines and get a Tip every week along with news and CFA views.

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To find a Faculty Rights Tip on a particular topic, use the Search function above. Enter “Faculty Rights Tip” and a relevant keyword.

Headline

Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Grievance Filing

In these times of COVID-19 and cutbacks, the volume of grievances faculty are filing is higher than ever. As faculty workload continues to increase in an environment of both austerity and changing learning and working conditions, CFA expects that the docket of grievances will continue to grow during the Spring 2021 academic term.

Did you know that you have 42 days to file a grievance if you believe your workplace rights have been violated? 

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Sabbatical Leaves

Article 27 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) affords all full-time faculty – both lecturers and tenured faculty – the opportunity to apply for sabbatical leaves, which both CFA and the CSU recognize are beneficial to the CSU and to the development of teacher-scholars in their research, scholarship, and creative activities as well as in their instructional activities.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Writing Rebuttals to Evaluations

By now, many campuses are well into their evaluation cycles. The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) provision below applies to all faculty undergoing any form of evaluation, but it is especially timely for probationary faculty applying for tenure or any faculty member up for promotion.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: How to Read the Litigation Hold Messages to Faculty

The CSU has been named in a number of lawsuits from students and classes of students who seek refunds of fees paid for instruction and services in this time of COVID-19 and campus closures. Because of the lawsuits, CSU administrators and employees are admonished not to destroy records that the plaintiffs may seek in the course of discovery. Records include email, syllabi, exams, other digital and printed documents, as well as Zoom or class recordings that faculty make.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: How Will the CSU Respond to Gendered Workload Inequalities in Spring 2021?

Last month, NPR reported that four times more women than men left the labor force. Of those workers who left, 80 percent were women and 20 percent were men.

Headline

Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Our Right to Academic Freedom

Our 2014-21 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) states, in the preamble, “The CSU shall support the pursuit of excellence and academic freedom in teaching, research, and learning through the free exchange of ideas among the faculty, students, and staff.”

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week:  Range Elevation for Lecturer Faculty – It Pays to Apply!

Range elevation is the formal process through which lecturers and temporary librarians can increase their salary by moving from one salary range to the next (e.g., Range A to B, B to C, or C to D).  If granted, a range elevation brings a salary increase of at least 5 percent, or the percentage increase required to reach at least the minimum of the next range, whichever is greater.  

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: What’s in Your PAF?

Every faculty member, including instructional faculty, coaches, counselors, and librarians has a Personnel Action File (PAF). It is the only official personnel file for employment information and information that may be relevant to personnel recommendations or actions. 

Article 11 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement covers the various rules about faculty Personnel Action Files. 

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: I Need a Union Rep!

Have you (or someone you know) ever been called into a meeting with an administrator and you were not quite sure what the meeting was about? While in the meeting, did you realize you were being questioned or investigated about some issue for which you might be disciplined, reprimanded, or otherwise negatively affected? You need, and are entitled to have, a union representative or another advocate of your choosing with you at that meeting. 

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week
What to Do When You Want to Report Discrimination, Harassment, or Retaliation

Article 16 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), the “Non-Discrimination” article, “prohibits discrimination against faculty unit employees on the basis of race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, marital status, pregnancy, age, disability, medical condition, or veteran status.”

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Lecturer Preference for Work at the Start of the Academic Year, with COVID-19-related Entitlement Protections

At the beginning of each new term, teaching assignments for lecturers are often in flux until the last minute. It can be a challenging time for both lecturers and department chairs/programs. During the pandemic and economic recession of 2020, these challenges are all the more acute. 

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Personal Holiday

We are living in times of intense stress and grief, as we navigate the crises of systemic racism and anti-Blackness, economic downturn, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Many faculty are not only teaching, counseling, and coaching students, but also trying to improve our communities, challenge injustice, and keep our families healthy and nurtured. 

Headline

Faculty Rights Tip of the Week
Get Acquainted with Your Evaluation Criteria & Procedures, and Your Coronavirus-Related Specific Campus Agreements

With the start of a new academic year, this faculty rights tip pertains to all faculty including coaches, counselors, librarians, lecturers, probationary, and tenured faculty.

Headline

Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Your Union Supports You Year-Round

As there is generally a seasonal rhythm to our working lives as faculty, we often scale back the intensity of our communications in the summertime. For the next two months, CFA’s weekly headlines will be going on hiatus. However, our work on your behalf continues.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Summer Employment

Article 21 of our Collective Bargaining Agreement covers summer term employment for CSU faculty. Many faculty with semester, quarter, or academic-year appointments may also find summer employment in the CSU.  

Summer employment can vary from campus to campus. It may take the form of state-funded year-round operations or self-support for-credit programs offered through extension.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: The 125 Percent Rule

When faculty are hired, they are often told that there are opportunities for additional employment in the summer or other “special sessions.” For many faculty, this additional employment is a critical part of their income.

Article 36 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement covers the rules for additional work and places a limitation on that “overage” to 25 percent of a full-time position.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: June Deadlines for Notification of Tenure and/or Promotion

Under Article 13: Tenure in our Collective Bargaining Agreement, June 1 is the contractual deadline for local campus administrators to notify probationary faculty of the final decision regarding retention, appointment with tenure, or appointment to a final terminal year. 

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Who Owns My Electronic Materials?

In the wake of COVID-19, the majority of faculty members now create electronic or online content for their courses. These materials are usually placed on the web in a variety of ways, often in course management systems like Moodle or Canvas.

Occasionally, there are misunderstandings about who actually owns these materials once they are placed online.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Lecturers, Know Your Time Base Entitlement

As the end of the Spring term approaches, many Lecturer faculty are looking ahead to employment for Summer and Fall, and beyond. Many Lecturers have already begun to discuss Fall course offerings and assignments with their department chairs. 

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Faculty Rights Tip: The Work Year

As summer nears, we are reminded that there is a yearly rhythm and cycle to our work.

There are three types of “Work Years” in our Collective Bargaining Agreement:

  • Academic Year (AY)
  • Ten (10)-Month Work Year
  • Twelve (12)-Month Work Year

While the individual campuses have their own particular academic calendars, they must conform to the parameters set out in Articles 20.4, 20.5, and 20.6 of our Collective Bargaining Agreement.

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