—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Maggie Trowe, Editor

 

San Francisco college teachers win support in one-day strike

SAN FRANCISCO — Members of the American Federation of Teachers Local 2121 at City College of San Francisco carried out a one-day strike April 27 demanding higher wages. While the cost of living has skyrocketed here, teachers’ pay is currently 3.5 percent below 2007 levels, Local President Tim Killikelly told CBS News.

Since 2012 the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges has called into question the community college’s compliance with educational standards. The school administration was replaced with a “special trustee with extraordinary powers” in 2013, and the commission announced it would take away the college’s accreditation, effectively closing it. A judge blocked that move, but the crisis has taken a major toll.

“The Accrediting Commission told the administration they shouldn’t give faculty any raise above COLA [cost of living]. It should not be influencing negotiations,” Wendy Kaufmyn, an engineering instructor on the union negotiating team, told the Militant on the picket line. Other unions helped strengthen the picket lines, including the Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers, the Service Employees International Union and the California Nurses Association.

School administrators plan to cut the number of classes by 26 percent over the next six years. “We want to keep City College open, accessible and affordable for all,” Kaufmyn said.

The college chancellor called off classes and locked facilities the day of the strike. Picket signs were hung across the steps leading up to the main building.

“I’m out here for the teachers, as a student and as an immigrant,” said Esther Wu, 21, at a midday rally downtown. “I started English classes here when I came to the U.S. two years ago. That’s very important for newcomers. But the administration wants to cut those classes.” The English as a Second Language faculty put out a flyer in Chinese, Arabic, Russian and Vietnamese explaining the issues in the strike.

Zhenye Pan, who works at the San Francisco Soup Company with Wu, was on the picket line. He is a member of the college Associated Students Council, which helped organize to bring students to the picket lines. Wu is part of the fight for $15 an hour. “If they increase wages, they need to keep the hours the same,” Pan told the Militant. “They’ve cut me down to two days a week from three” since the San Francisco minimum wage rose to $12.25 a year ago.

Enrollment has declined since the “accreditation crisis” raised doubts about the college’s future, and classes have been cut. “The crisis has scared students away,” Kaufmyn said.

— Eric Simpson