Chaparral 2024-2025: Going Wild with the Guild with Outgoing 2nd VP Juli Wolfgram

Chaparral wants to thank Outgoing 2nd VP and Art History Instructor Juli Wolfgram for her tenure in the Guild. We asked Juli what she would like to see for the Guild next as well as her reflections on the struggle for part-time rights these last years:

Start small, grow wild! I feel as if my involvement with the Glendale Guild can certainly be described with this phrase. I have always felt a kinship with labor and its struggle for better working conditions. What I didn’t realize is that the struggle for better working conditions is a struggle for social justice. It’s the idea of joining with others for social justice that really propelled me into more involvement with the Guild. I took a small step, I asked then President Rich Kamei if I could attend a CFT Convention. At that convention more than ten years ago, like-minded colleagues energized me to collectively fight for social justice.

I joined the CFT standing committee for Part Time Faculty and thus began a journey of learning how to fight for better working conditions for all part time faculty in the California Community Colleges. I learned of inequities at many other institutions while recognizing the gains we have achieved at Glendale. We get paid for office hours, and we have an office to hold those hours for students. We have ancillary funds to pay for work we do for the district outside of our classroom hours. We can participate in department meetings, college governance, and the Academic Senate. We have re-employment rights, and we have access to unemployment benefits. We now have access to the same healthcare as our full-time colleagues! These gains are the result of collective bargaining, aligning the working conditions of faculty with student success.

Now the Guild needs to go wild! We need to work together to get rid of the very system of a two-tier faculty. I have the privilege of working with the CFT Task Force which has come up with a strategy to abolish the two-tier system. For true equity, all faculty should be treated equally with the same rights and responsibilities. We need a unified faculty, a united faculty. We need ONE FACULTY. This is the only way to ensure due process and academic freedom in our institutions of higher education. This is the only way to ensure our students have access to affordable high quality education.

The One Faculty campaign is slowly becoming an upswell movement across the state and across the nation. The campaign is going to require the collective efforts of all faculty at all districts throughout the state of California. We need to embrace the vision of One Faculty in our bargaining, our community outreach, and in our legislation. Only then will we achieve social justice for our students, our faculty, our staff, and our community.

So! Even though I am stepping down from a position in Guild Exec, I will stay in the fight for social justice at Glendale Community College. I will continue to rally all of you to engage in this movement to make GCC a premium institution of higher education!

In unity,

Juli Wolfgram

2nd VP for Part Time Faculty

Glendale Guild, AFT 2276