Dear Esteemed Colleagues,

We hope that your Spring semester has gotten off to a great start!

We’ve been working hard to advocate for our faculty members from the district to Sacramento. And we’ve been winning some significant gains despite significant obstacles and difficult political terrain.

In our district, we’ve secured increases in both salaries and district contributions to our health benefits. With your help, we’ve also shined a light on the problem of increasing workload, and continue to advocate for fair and equitable workloads through the new committee formed after negotiating our new contract.

In Sacramento, CFT has contributed to several victories in the legislative and budget processes, including first steps towards free community college in California (AB19). New legislation supported by CFT also included protections for immigrant students (AB 699), expansion of student equity (AB 1018), and improvements to college disciplinary proceedings (AB 1651) among others.

We’ve been able to accomplish these working with all of you in our district, and our fellow educators across the state. And we’ll need to keep standing together to face the challenges yet to come.

Our progress, however, is threatened. This Spring, the Supreme Court is likely to reverse a long-standing ruling that allows unions to collect “fair-share” fees from non-members to support those activities that benefit all faculty. Their expected ruling in the Janus v. AFSCME case will affect the entire public sector in the United States. Their aim is to financially weaken our unions, the strongest remaining political vehicles for working people. More information about Janus can be found from American Prospect, The Atlantic, and Labor Notes to name a few.

To face these challenges, we are going to make sure that our membership is as robust as possible. This means that we will be reaching out to all faculty about their membership—particularly those who are fee payers and not members. You may be asked to fill out a membership form (even if you already have) to be sure that we have records for all of our faculty who want to be part of the Union. We’ll be all hands on deck registering members at all three colleges this week and
you can help show our unity by wearing your AFT 1493 t-shirt:

• at CSM on Monday, February 5 and Thursday, February 8
  
• at Cañada on Tuesday, February 6
• at Skyline on Wednesday, February 7!

It’s an easy and fun way to show our collective power and what we can accomplish as a union.

In Unity,
Monica Malamud
President, AFT Local 1493