President’s Report

Hello colleagues. My name is Jason Newman and I serve proudly as the president of our faculty union, the Los Rios College Federation of Teachers AFT 2279 (LRCFT). This is the LRCFT’s first issue of the Union News since I became president, so I’m taking this opportunity to introduce myself.

Family inspired me to become both a teacher and a labor leader. My mother earned her AA degree from Mendocino Community College in Early Childhood Education in 1978. She directed and taught at a cooperative preschool in Ukiah for 37 years. Working with her at the school motivated me to become a teacher. I later learned that my great grandmother started a labor union for laundry workers in 1937 in South Dakota. Heavy shoes to fill, but here I am.

 In 2002, while completing my doctorate in U.S. History with an emphasis in Native American Studies at UC Davis, I was hired as a full-time history professor at Cosumnes River College. Over the past twenty years, I have taught courses in U.S., Latin American, African American, and Native American history at CRC. I have also worked to advance the interests of Native American students at CRC, and actively promoted faculty interests as an officer of the LRCFT.

One of the college service activities that I am most proud of is CRC’s annual Native American Heritage Week. Students and faculty have worked together since 2008 to arrange this event for the students, college, and community. For over fifteen years we have brought native speakers, performers, resources, and vendors to the CRC campus. We have broadened the outreach to include Native American student graduations on the four campuses, which our union financially supports, along with other affinity-based graduations.

I joined the LRCFT right after being hired at CRC, and I have been active in the faculty union ever since. I was elected as a union representative and member of the LRCFT Executive Board in 2004, I served as LRCFT College President at CRC from 2010 to 2020, and I have been fortunate to hold the position of LRCFT President since 2020. In addition to serving as faculty union president, I serve as a Vice President of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), our statewide affiliate. I was also appointed in 2022 as Recording Secretary for the Sacramento Central Labor Council, which represents 90 local unions in the Sacramento area.

During my five years as President of LRCFT, the union has confronted some significant challenges. The most obvious of these was the global COVID-19 pandemic, which severely disrupted life and learning in the Sacramento area. As Los Rios pivoted to remote instruction, with faculty bearing the brunt of the workload, the LRCFT negotiated stipends and other measures designed to alleviate the hardships of this sudden shock to our educational institutions and employees.

In 2021 and 2022, the LRCFT reorganized the faculty salary schedules, providing improvements designed to aid faculty in the lower and middle portions of the salary range. Then during contract negotiations in 2023, we added money between steps at the top of the salary schedules to help senior, long-time faculty employees, and we hope to make further improvements that will ensure greater economic security for senior faculty in their retirement. The 2023 contract also included measures such as 8 weeks of fully paid parental leave; an improved compensation model for department chairs; and an expanded, paid college service and professional development program for part-time faculty.

The abrupt closing of Davies Hall in September 2023 was a significant challenge for faculty and staff at the largest Los Rios college, with over 80 faculty displaced from offices and hundreds of classes forced to relocate or move online with only a day’s notice. LRCFT was active in helping faculty confront this challenge, and the Union negotiated a package worth around $750,000 to compensate affected faculty for the workload involved in moving classes and offices in the middle of a busy semester. We also filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against Los Rios with the Public Employment Relations Board, due to the administration’s failure to provide the Union with sufficient notice and an opportunity to negotiate impacts before closing the building. We reached a settlement with the District on this charge, with the District acknowledging that it “can do better…in the future,” and agreeing to add stronger language in the Safety article of the faculty contract.

In Spring 2024, the District led a misconduct investigation on nine faculty members who taught in the Los Rios Prison and Re-entry Education Program (PREP). The faculty members and the Union argued from the beginning that the investigation was ill-advised and unnecessary, and that the faculty had broken no rules and violated no policies. LRCFT represented the PREP faculty in the investigation, which lasted for much of the Spring semester. The investigator’s report vindicated our initial assessment, and all faculty were fully exonerated of any wrongdoing.

Representing faculty through these, and other issues related to their work in Los Rios, is at the core of the LRCFT’s mission. Working as your union president over the past five years has been one of the most rewarding and challenging professional experiences of my lifetime. I am also thankful for the support of Los Rios faculty and LRCFT staff who have helped me protect and expand faculty rights in the areas of performance review, workload, and academic freedom.

Before I finish, I would like to thank all members who attended our annual end-of-year union gathering, held at Oak Park Brewery in Sacramento on May Day, May 1. For the first time, this was a joint union picnic, held in collaboration with the two other Los Rios employee unions: the Los Rios Classified Employees Association (LRCEA), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021. The event was a great success, and a joint celebration of the hard work that faculty and classified professionals and service workers perform daily for our students and the Los Rios community. We hope to hold more joint events with LRCEA and SEIU, and if you couldn’t make it out this year, we hope to see you in the future. Here is a gallery of pictures from the event.

Congratulations on the end of another successful academic year in Los Rios. Thank you for all that you do for our students and for each other. I hope you have an enjoyable and restful summer, and I look forward to seeing you and serving you as your union president in the upcoming academic year.

In solidarity,

Jason Newman
LRCFT President
History Professor, Cosumnes River College