Introduction to AFT2121 and
faculty rights
The American Federation of Teachers, Local 2121 represents the faculty of City College of San Francisco. We are educators and we are dedicated to the teaching and learning process. Our membership includes teachers, counselors, librarians, and researchers at City College campuses in communities throughout San Francisco. We number about 1100 members out of a total bargaining unit of 1650 faculty, all of whose interests we defend. Our Union was chartered in 1970 by 24 faculty members who had the foresight to organize a faculty union to seek the right to collectively bargain with the District. After protracted struggle, we realized our first contract in 1979.
You should receive a copy of the AFT/District contract when you are hired. If you don't, call us and we will immediately send one. Pay schedules appear as appendices to the contract. If you are fortunate enough to be hired on a full-time basis, you will want to pay attention to the Full-Time Salary Schedule and the provisions governing initial salary placement (Article 20.A). You will want to be sure that you are getting proper credit for your previous teaching or related work experience and education level. The tenure review process (Article 9.C) will naturally be a chief concern during your first several years here, assuming that you are are hired in a tenure-track basis.
Part-timers will want to view the Pro-rata Salary Schedules (pdf), which are tied by load formulas to the Full-Time Salary Schedule (pdf), and appear in the appendices to the contract. The Instructional Pro-rata Schedules are separated into credit and non-credit modes, each with a different hourly rate scale. Part-timers accrue job security or reemployment rights in accord with Article 13-1 of the Contract after four semesters of service with a satisfactory formal evaluation.
AFT 2121 is Your Faculty Union!
The foregoing are some of your basic contractual rights which Local 2121 officials and the executive staff work to defend and improve. Questions of your rights sometimes get complicated, and the Union local is there to help you assert them.
AFT Local 2121 is a professional faculty union that represents and advocates for you. To do this effectively, we need your active support. Beginning with your first paycheck, a small percentage of your gross pay will go to the Union to help pay for the cost of representation. It is called a service fee, and you must pay it, just as we must represent you. Our hope, however, is that you will choose to join the one-thousand-plus teachers, counselors, and librarians at CCSF and become a member of AFT Local 2121. All that is required is that you fill out and sign a membership application and dues authorization.
Our union office is located near the Ocean campus at 311 Miramar Avenue (at Ocean Avenue). Our membership is organized into precincts of 25-40 members, each with an elected representative. These precinct reps, together with our Executive Board members, form our principal governance body, the Delegate Assembly and are your conduit to the Union.
The Executive Board and Delegate Assembly Representatives are elected by the union membership every two years. The principal elected officers of the Union are released from some portion of their faculty workloads to keep our organization running and to represent the faculty in contract negotiations, in grievance procedures, on District committees, and in statewide councils and task forces. We are staffed by a full-time Executive Director and two half-time office clerks. We are part of the highly respected Community College Council, which is the majority union in community colleges statewide; its umbrella union, the California Federation of Teachers; and the national American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. Copies of our local By-laws and Constitution are available in print at our office.
We urge you to lend your support to the Union by joining as a member. We invite your active participation in the union's democratic process by attending our union meetings, serving on a committee, running for office as Precinct Representative, etc. Your membership also entitles you to receive union publications throughout the year and a wide variety of credit union and other benefits such as access to certain insurance policies, discount privileges to Marine World USA and Disneyland, discount car rentals, etc. Membership also enables you to vote in the AFT Election of Officers and Precinct Delegates.