Introducing the LRCFT Executive Director

Greetings, Los Rios faculty! My name is Michael Henderson, and I’m the Executive Director of LRCFT. I’ve held this position for just over two years now, and I have met many of you during that time. I want to take this opportunity, presented by the welcome resurrection of the Union News, to introduce myself to all faculty in our bargaining unit.

I came to LRCFT from California State University, San Marcos (CSUSM), in north San Diego County, where I was a Lecturer—that is, part-time faculty—in the History Department for 12 years. My field is United States History. I taught survey courses in US History, as well as upper division courses in California History, and the History of Religion in the United States.

I was an active member of the California Faculty Association, the union that represents the 29,000 faculty who teach in the California State University system. From 2017 through 2022, I was a member of CFA’s Faculty Rights Committee on the San Marcos campus, including two and a half years as Chair of the Committee. My faculty rights work involved representing faculty in discipline matters and in cases related to the CFA contract.

I joined LRCFT as Executive Director in January 2023, right as the union was preparing to negotiate a new faculty contract. While I had done a considerable amount of faculty rights work at CSUSM, I had not been involved in contract negotiations with CFA, so diving straight into the bargaining process with LRCFT was quite a challenge. It was three months of intensive work, but my transition into the role was eased greatly by the quality of the LRCFT Negotiations Team, including Chief Negotiator Belinda Lum and outgoing Executive Director Robert Perrone. Robert kindly agreed to delay his retirement, after over 30 years serving the union, to be part of the bargaining team and to help me adjust to my new role as his replacement.

Over the past two years, I feel like I’ve settled into the role of serving our 2,000 or so full-time and part-time faculty. Because despite my somewhat impressive title, that is my primary responsibility at the union: serving our faculty. I work for the LRCFT’s President and Executive Board, and by extension for all the faculty in our bargaining unit. I support, and am supported by, a committed group of LRCFT officers, representatives, and staff.

The LRCFT’s work involves communicating and negotiating with the Los Rios Administration on behalf of the faculty as a whole, and also helping individual faculty members with issues related to their employment, their rights under the faculty contract, under District policies, and under the law. While publications like the Union News, and events like workshops and social gatherings might be the area where the Union is the most visible, the majority of what we do, at the Union office in midtown Sacramento and at the four colleges and numerous centers of Los Rios, is the day-to-day work of helping our faculty with their questions, their concerns, and their difficulties; and making sure that management respects both faculty and the faculty contract.

I love this work. It’s sometimes challenging in its volume and its variety and its complexity, but it’s also incredibly rewarding. I’m very happy to work for LRCFT and for the amazing community college faculty we have in Los Rios. Along with the rest of our team, I’m gearing up for our next round of contract negotiations, and as we do that, I look forward to meeting more of our members and supporting you while you do the incredibly important work of supporting our students.