What is an ESRU? It stands for Extra Specific Re-assigned Units. These are units assigned to faculty for non-instructional work, separate from teaching, library, or counseling responsibilities. For example, faculty coordinator positions.
The District has unilaterally cut a significant number of ESRUs for the Fall semester. While they have the managerial prerogative to do so, their decision impacts our working conditions, and they don’t seem to have a plan for how that work will get done. In some cases, they think faculty will just meekly add all that work to our schedules. In other cases, they’ve said that the work simply won’t happen. So partnering together, the DCC and AFT have asserted a union’s right to engage in Impact Bargaining (where we can only bargain over the effects of a decision, not the decision itself). We had our 4th session on June 6th. The final agreement will largely be in the purview of the DCC, however, AFT has been supporting the fight because our members, our programs and our students will also be impacted.
In the first Impact Bargaining session it was abundantly clear that the administration had no idea of the specific work covered by ESRUs. They had made the assumption that the work was either unnecessary, it could be done by classified, or it could be done by faculty as part of their “professional duties.”
Through this process, we hope to educate the administration on the actual work that these ESRUs support. Hopefully they will acknowledge the adverse impacts on students and programs and conclude that their decision was ill-considered. Short of that, we are working to document a clear record of the duties that coordinators and chairs are able to do with the allotted ESRUs, and also clearly identify the work that won’t get done. At the very least we want to prevent the District from blaming department chairs and faculty for critical work left undone due to lack of district-allocated resources.
You can help
It looks like they don’t even know what coordinators do. Help us show admin how these cuts will damage our departments, our programs, and our students. We’d like to tell them. So please let us know:
In addition to scheduling, what does your coordinator do for you and for your program? We’ll compile your comments into one list.
- Your name (I won’t share it)
- Your department or program (I might share that, if it’s relevant)
- What does your coordinator do for you, your students, and your program? What do they do in general as part of their job? Do you have a particular story about how they helped you out?
- Coordinators, also tell us what you do.
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