Hi All,

For today’s Wednesday Win, I would like to review some of this last year’s successes. One of the first things we did was settle a contract with our OPEIU staff. The kind of contact a union could be proud of. I want to thank Tina Ramlall, Robert Salazar, and Reyna Gonzalez for all their hard work. Next, we promoted our lead organizer, Seo Yun Son, to the organizing director. She is the best in the business. Her work with our fantastic faculty on our Contract Action Teams has made our organizing effective, unifying, and formidable. We hired an Executive Director, Leslie Simon, who has vast experience not just being an Executive Director but in labor law, organizing, and negotiations.

We identified some of our union’s weaknesses in our infrastructure. With the help of our staff and the executive director, we began to strengthen our union by putting into place procedures and establishing an online infrastructure. Working with our Campus Presidents, we passed policies like the Executive Board Code of Ethics, Conflict of Interest, Expenditure, Financial Timeline, Internal Financial Procedures, and a Whistleblower Policy through our EBoard. We finally moved forward on constructing a new website which we will be debuting in the fall semester. With the work of Natalina Monterio, COPE, and the Student Interns were able to get all our supported candidates elected to the Board of Trustees. I was elected as a CFT Vice President and appointed to CFT’s Executive Council. Dr. Jessica St. Paul and her debt clinic warriors now have forgiven $2 441,215.29 of our members’ college debt.

We got a COVID MOU that protected our students, faculty, and community. This MOU also saved jobs by getting the district to lower the minimum limit to cut classes. It also got our non-classroom faculty the respect they deserve as high-trust faculty by allowing them to do fully remote work from home. We are continuing to fight for this in the contract negotiations.

We also lost a legend. Our attorney, who had provided decades of service tous, Larry Rosenzweig, passed away. He has been a pillar in the labor community, leaving behind a legacy of wins and setting a precedent that will be difficult to follow. We were able to hire the Law Firm of Bush Gottlieb, a leader in labor law. After years of having our staff take on bookkeeping duties, we hired a new bookkeeper/accountant Sandy Imai. We also hired a firm to audit our finances and procedures comprehensively.

With all that was done, it is dwarfed by our victory for adjunct healthcare. Many of you have been at the forefront of this battle for decades. We showed up and showed out in Sacramento supporting CFT as they fought to get 200 million dollars set aside for adjunct healthcare. Now we had to convince the district to do their part. We went to Board of Trustees meetings, organizing speaker after speaker, giving heartbreaking testimony about the financial and human cost of not having affordable healthcare. When you were done, they saw and heard you and could not deny your humanity. We spent months convincing the administration to work with us as partners and do the right thing for our faculty, students, and community. After listening to you, the faculty, the Chancellor came to me and said, “Get a team together and let’s make this happen.” So Bill Eleraton-Selig, Grace Chee, Chris Cofer, Ruby Christian-Broughm, and I met with the administration to create a workgroup for adjunct healthcare. You know the rest; we got the best healthcare package in the state for our adjuncts. This was not a wish but a dream come true. This is life-changing and life-saving. All of you who have participated in the fight for adjunct healthcare, please stand up and be recognized.

We’re still going. Our negotiations team is working hard to get us the contract we deserve. Thank all of you who have been showing up to watch the negotiations. Your support of the team is much needed and appreciated. Last, I want to inform you about our Adjunct Emergency Relief Grant. COVID has devasted our enrollments. What management calls class cuts are really layoffs and pay reductions that disproportionately affect our adjuncts. To relieve some of the financial stress, AFT 1521 is offering a one-time grant of $400 to 25 members working as adjunct faculty chosen. Adjunct faculty applying for the grant must do so between 12:01 am on Monday, June 5, 2023, and 11:59 pm on Saturday, June 10, 202. All qualified applicants will be placed into a lottery and the first 25 names drawn will receive the grant. For more information, please contact Felipe Argedano and Fatima Baldiwala, chairs of the Community Support and Engagement Committee, at agredan@yahoo.com or fatema.baldi@gmail.com.

Together we have many wins in our future. Thank you for all your time and support over this past year.

In Unity,

A. James McKeever PhD

AFT 1521 Faculty Guild President