Dear Faculty,

You are only 300 signatures away from hitting your goal of 5,000 signatures to ensure a historic CCSF funding measure (#SFWERCS) makes it on the ballot in November. Do your part by putting your petition in the mail today and help push your signature effort over the edge, & then join SF Supervisors Mar, Melgar, and the CCSF Revenue Unity Coalition at a City Hall Press Conference Monday, July 11, at 12pm to celebrate the next steps in your campaign. RSVP for Monday now!

Return your signatures today & join your community at City Hall on Monday:

1. To ensure your signatures are received by Monday, put your whole petition w/any # of SF voter signatures in the mail today to your AFT 2121 office at 311 Miramar Ave SF, CA 94112. You can use the stamped & self-addressed envelope included in your packet. Be sure to sign the back of your petition booklet & the “declaration of circulator” form included in your packet when you make your return.

2. RSVP now for Monday’s press conference. https://bit.ly/SFWERCS-PRESS

Fighting for full funding & better leadership is key to improving your college, so make sure you return your petition and join your community on Monday!

In Solidarity,

AFT 2121

As we all continue to look for ways to push back on the devastating impacts of the May layoffs, our colleagues serving the Filipinx and Pacific Islander communities have launched a community letter writing campaign. We are all here to support our students and our students deserve to be supported by members of their communities, by those that share a cultural connection. In the case of our Pacific Islander students this connection has been severed. Please join us in showing support for our TULAY and VĀSĀ students by signing the letter and consider sharing with your networks.

Dear community,

We are writing to ask for your support!

As a result of the massive layoffs that happened in Spring 2022, the contracts of two counselors hired to specifically address the evolving needs of Filipinx and Pacific Islander students at CCSF were terminated.

Between 2017 and 2022, these counselors facilitated culturally relevant events and programs to support our students’ academic, emotional, and social well being, in addition to offering academic counseling services. They also developed outreach and application workshops, cultural events, high school conferences, leadership retreats, and partnered with community based organizations to reach out to and support potential and current students from our most vulnerable neighborhoods.

We recognize that we are in a constant battle to ensure our Filipinx and Pacific Islander students’ needs are served and our communities are visible at CCSF. The fight to preserve these positions continues to be challenging. We need to make our grievances clear to CCSF’s leadership. We need to demand that they provide more resources for culturally relevant services designed to support student equity populations. We need CCSF to resolve this matter in a way that best serves the people.

Please consider signing this letter of support for TULAY and VASA. We are gathering signatures until July 31st. We will be presenting our concerns at the Board of Trustees meeting when they reconvene in August. If you would like to include an impact statement, please do so.

We are grateful for your continued support and commitment to ensuring our students’ needs are met and that CCSF lives up to its commitment to being an equitable and student-centered institution.

In Community,

Dr. David “Vika” Palaita and Dr. Lily Ann B. Villaraza

Every faculty member received a signature gathering packet in the mail two weeks ago, so that you can do your part to ensure a historic CCSF funding measure goes to SF voters in November. It’s imperative that everyone who received a packet get at least 3 signatures from SF voters and return their packet ASAP and by next Wednesday, July, 6, at the very latest.

Key steps:

1. Get at least 3 signatures from SF voters to support City College. If you have any questions, watch this helpful training video on the measure, consult this 1pg fact sheet on the measure, or attend a signature gathering training trmw Tuesday June 28 12-12:30pm on Zoom (link here).

2. Sign the back of your petition booklet & the “declaration of circulator” form included in your packet

3. Return your entire booklet (do not tear out pages) & declaration form in the envelope included in your packet to the AFT 2121 office (you will have to fold the booklet), or drop off your materials at the AFT office (you can slide the booklet & form through the side of the office door)

As part of the Revenue Unity Coalition with SEIU 1021, SF Building Trades, & Stationary Engineers Local 39, your goal as faculty is to collect 5,000 signatures by July 11. Right now, you have 2900 with two weeks left.

If the remaining faculty members with packets return them with at least 3 signatures, you will beat your goal and generate over 2,000 signatures for City College.

Many hands make light work–wherever you live in the Bay Area, you can find a way to talk to 3 SF voters about signing their names in support of your college. And remember, your colleagues are going out everyday to gather signatures, so if you need a group to go with, join by RSVPing here: https://bit.ly/ccsfREVENUE

Signature Gathering Mobilizations for Pride, SF Mime, & Sunday Streets

You’re at 1705 returned signatures with 3 weeks to go, which is good, but you need all hands on deck for this final push to reach your goal of 5000.

Join in-person mobilizations 6/25, 7/4, & 7/10. RSVP: https://bit.ly/ccsfREVENUE  

Saturday, June 25 at 1pm at Dolores Park for Pride Weekend

Monday, July 4 at 12pm at Dolores Park for the SF Mime Show

Sunday, July 10 at 10am at Valencia Sunday Streets (16th & Valencia)

And reminder! Return your signature gathering packets in the mail by this Friday 6/24 w/at least 3 signatures from SF voters, a signed  “Signed Statement for Petition Circulators” form (included in your packet), and a completed “Declaration of Circulator” section on the back of your petition booklet. If you have any questions, watch this training video and/or call Alan D’Souza at 415.203.5698.

Return your packets, join your community at an in-person mobilization, and do your part to stand up for CCSF.

CCSF has an ethical imperative to extend healthcare for recently laid off faculty!

Last Wednesday our District Bargaining Team made it clear that they weren’t interested in engaging in any real negotiations around extending healthcare benefits to laid off faculty, and at today’s session they confirmed that approach by once again rejecting nearly all of our union’s proposals. We believe the college has an ethical obligation to extend this important benefit to faculty who have faithfully served the college, especially in the middle of a pandemic. If you agree, please sign on to our email campaign to take the issue directly to the CCSF Board of Trustees and consider making a public comment at the Board of Trustees meeting this Thursday, 6/23, starting at 3:30PM.

Here is the link to sign on and share.

Celebrate Pride with Students and Union Allies!

The San Mateo Community College Federation of Teachers has invited AFT 2121 members, students, and allies to join in an education and labor celebration of SF Pride. Join us for the Trans March, Dyke March, and/or People’s March. At all these events, we will be standing with our LGBTQIA2+ community & our labor allies and students, while also gathering signatures to support our college. Join us & spread the word: bit.ly/AFTpridesignup

The organizers write, “Over the years, the popular SF Pride Parade has become increasingly corporatized and more heavily policed. The LGBTQIA2+ community has expressed growing concern over these developments, which displace important histories of activism—specifically organizing by Black/Brown/Indigenous Trans and Queer folks—and contribute to the violence of all kinds that targets these communities and that many of us seek to overturn. We are joining together as local union activists with our students, our families, our friends, and our accomplices to show our solidarity with LGBTQ+ justice in three marches this summer, happening the weekend of 6/26.

Reminder, your next confirmed Layoffs Impacts Open Bargaining session is today, Wednesday, June 22 at 3pm.

Register for that session now: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUlcOGvrTIoE9QQXg30yz7wzJ52rVy7Z1zm

You only need to register once for any summer bargaining session!

Come out to Dolores Park tomorrow Sunday, June 19 @ from 2-5pm for a mini mobilization for San Francisco Workforce Education Reinvestment in Community Success Act (SF WERCS)

Meet at picnic area near Church & 19th St entrance. 

It’ll be a beautiful day in San Francisco and an opportunity to ensure City College stays the jewel in SF’s crown. We will be collecting signatures from SF voters and asking them to invest in City College and fully fund the educational goals of SF  residents.

There is less than a month to collect 14,000 signatures, so we need all faculty to join the effort. Please use this link (https://bit.ly/ccsfREVENUE) to RSVP for tomorrow or for another volunteer time.

The groundwork has been laid and our momentum is building, but we can’t make this a reality without your support, see you there!

SF WERCS FACTSHEET

On Wednesday 6/15, our AFT 2121 bargaining team met with the District again. We tried to bargain over AFT’s proposals to extend health benefits and severance pay for our laid-off members. The District rejected our proposals without offering a counter-proposal, saying they were “too expensive”. When Alayna Fredricks pushed Clara Starr to define what the district thought was “too expensive”, Clara Starr and John al-Amin struggled to come up with an exact figure between $70,000 and $80,000. It was clear that, once again, the District had not done their homework or made any effort to cost out what the actual numbers would be. AFT 2121 Treasurer Clare Heimer noted items in the District budget that cost more than $80,000: copiers and printers, litigation, credit card fees, and interest payments. This puts into stark contrast how little regard the District has for employees who have devoted decades of their lives to service to the college.

When asked what concrete forms of assistance the District planned to offer laid-off faculty, Clara Starr replied that members could sign up for Covered California or COBRA. The District refuses to take any responsibility for the harm they have inflicted on our members due to unnecessary layoffs. Our AFT 2121 Secretary Robin Pugh made an impassioned appeal for how loss of health benefits is ruining the lives of our laid-off members, for whom the exorbitant cost of health care exacerbates the stress and vulnerability of unemployment. This, coming during the COVID pandemic, is unconscionable and speaks to the total lack of empathy and leadership from this administration and chancellor.

The District refused to offer any severance to laid-off faculty. AFT’s Executive Director Alayna Fredricks and members of the bargaining team pointed out that Mark Rocha, former chancellor of CCSF, was paid approximately $375,000 in severance plus health benefits, as well as being paid for accrued vacation time. This kind of heartless double standard shows the hypocrisy of this administration and their lack of commitment to the majority of hard-working employees.

It is clear, once again, that this District is not engaging in good faith bargaining. PERB has already found AFT’s Unfair Labor Practice charge to have merit, and this continued bad faith bargaining will only add to the charge.

When asked about future bargaining sessions, Clara Starr remarked that perhaps next week, Wednesday June 22nd, should be the LAST bargaining session as she is planning on going on vacation. Clearly, AFT 2121 will continue to demand that we bargain. This unwillingness to engage in good faith bargaining as well as the overall tone of the past few bargaining sessions speaks to the noticeable shift towards the de-emphasizing and deterioration of labor relations since David Martin took over as CCSF Chancellor in November. The District must come to the table and engage in serious good faith bargaining. Meanwhile, AFT 2121 will pursue every avenue both within bargaining and through other means to pursue justice for our members and defend our college in light of these inhumane assaults.