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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.

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Faculty Rights Tip: Grievance Filing

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

Article 10.4 allows you to file a grievance no later than 42 calendar days after the event giving rise to the grievance or 42 days after you knew or reasonably should have known of the event giving rise to the grievance.

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Faculty Rights Tip: What to do if you or someone you know receives a notice of pending discipline

If you receive a “Notice of Pending Discipline” it is important to contact your CFA representative immediately. The timelines articulated in Article 19 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) move very quickly. 

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Faculty Rights Tip: Safety

Article 37 of our Collective Bargaining Agreement covers workplace safety for all Unit 3 faculty members—instructional faculty, counselors, librarians, and coaches.

It is the administration’s responsibility to ensure that faculty members are not required to work in unsafe conditions or perform tasks that endanger health or safety.

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Faculty Rights Tip: A word or two about reprimands

Article 18 of our Collective Bargaining Agreement covers reprimands. Here are some important things to know about reprimands:

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Faculty Rights Tip: Workload for Counselors and evaluation criteria for faculty

Counselor faculty often find themselves supervised by administrators who are unfamiliar with the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). This can create problems in a number of areas, especially counselors’ workload and evaluation.

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Faculty Rights Tip: What to do when you want to report discrimination, harassment, or retaliation

Article 16 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, 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: The Fee Waiver Program

The CSU Faculty Fee Waiver program is a valuable benefit for faculty members, our spouses, domestic partners, or dependent children up to age 25. Article 26 of the contract articulates the details of the Fee Waiver Program.

The benefit is available to all tenured and probationary faculty and temporary faculty (excluding coaches) with three-year appointments.

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Faculty Rights Tip: Leaves at reduced pay will impact retirement

Articles 27 and 28 of our faculty contract provide for Sabbatical Leaves and Difference in Pay (DIP) leaves. These articles provide mechanisms for faculty to take leaves at full pay and reduced pay rates. When faculty take any leave at a reduced pay there will be an impact on retirement service credit. Sabbaticals at full pay do not result in reduced service credit.

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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?

And once in the meeting realized, 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.

You can invoke your right to have an advocate with you before or during the meeting by saying:

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Faculty Rights Tip: The FERP and PRTB Program

Our Faculty Contract provides two programs for tenured faculty who are close to retirement. Article 29 covers the provisions for the Faculty Early Retirement (FERP) program and Article 30 covers the Pre-Retirement Reduction in Time Base (PRTB) program.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: What the W? What is “WTU” and what does it mean for “Workload”?

WTU stands for Weighted Teaching Unit. WTUs represent the effort and value assigned to instructional faculty work. (Coaches, Counselors, and Librarians work in 40-hour or less workweeks without reference to WTUs to measure their work.)

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Faculty Rights Tip: Writing Rebuttals to Evaluations

By now many campuses are well into their evaluation cycles.

The Faculty Contract 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.

Contract Article15.5 provides that:

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Lecturers & Canceled Classes

Here’s a timely tip for Lecturers who may be assigned to a class that gets canceled in the first few weeks of the term (from Article 12.5):

“… If a class is canceled prior to the third class meeting, the temporary employee shall be paid the portion of the term worked prior to the cancellation.

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Faculty Rights Tip: What to do if you or someone you know receives a notice of pending discipline

If you receive a “Notice of Pending Discipline” it is important to contact your CFA representative immediately. The timelines articulated in Article 19 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) move very quickly.  

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Emergency Leave

The Collective Bargaining Agreement provides for leave for faculty who need to take time off due to emergency situations. While several campuses closed operations in the past weeks, others stayed open. It’s important to know that regardless of your campus’s open/closed status, you’re entitled to paid leave if you need it.

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Faculty Rights Tip: Assigned Time for Exceptional Levels of Service to Students

Article 20.37 of our Collective Bargaining Agreement provides for:

“assigned time to faculty employees who are engaged in exceptional levels of service that support the CSU’s priorities, but who are not otherwise receiving an adjustment in workload to reflect their effort.”

This provision was a major achievement in our last round of bargaining and is a recognition by the CSU that some faculty are providing exceptional levels of service to students but are not receiving workload relief for this effort.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Personal Holiday

With the approaching end of the current calendar year it’s useful to know that every faculty employee is entitled to one Personal Holiday each year. Our faculty contract states:

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Faculty Rights Tip: Two kinds of grievances

The collective bargaining agreement provides two methods for the filing and processing of a grievance. They are referred to as the contract grievance track and the statutory grievance track.

The statutory track provides for a Faculty Hearing Committee to review the grievance and may, as a practical matter, involve claims which range far beyond direct contract violations.

The contract grievance track does not use a Faculty Hearing Committee and, as a practical matter, tends to focus on violations of the collective bargaining agreement.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Range Elevation Reminder

Range elevation is the process through which eligible Lecturers and temporary Librarians can increase their salaries by moving from one salary range to the next.

Normally, eligibility requires five years of service in current range and no Service Salary Increase (SSI) eligibility. Thanks to CFA’s Bargaining Team, range elevation has been expanded so that long-term Lecturers, even if they have not maxed out SSIs, may be eligible too.

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Faculty Rights Tip: What to do when you want to report discrimination, harassment, or retaliation

Article 16 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, 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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