Trevor Griffey drives more than 200 miles every week to teach at both UCLA and UC Irvine.

If he chose to work at only one of the two schools, he said he would have either a 50% or 37% teaching appointment. Griffey is the vice president of legislation for University Council-AFT – a union representing the UC’s lecturers and librarians. Combining these two appointments is how he sustains himself, he added.

Griffey is not alone – under 20% of UC-AFT members have full-time appointments, said Caroline Luce, UC-AFT’s communications chair.

Minimum appointment hours are one of the things the union has discussed including in its ongoing negotiations for a new contract with the University, Griffey added. The union’s current contract is set to expire June 30.

[Related: UC and UC-AFT negotiations tentatively set to begin in March]

Alison Lipman, a continuing lecturer of ecology and evolutionary biology, said the union is demanding job security protections for lecturers that somewhat resemble those of tenure-track faculty. Professors are on the track to become tenured – a status that offers job security and greater benefits – and often teach and research, while lecturers focus primarily on undergraduate instruction.

“A Senate faculty member could take over my classes, and I could lose my job, even though I’ve been here for 15 years,” Lipman said. “I could lose my job to a graduate student. I could lose my job to a postdoc.”

The UC Office of the President and UCLA Media Relations did not respond in time to a request for comment on the negotiations.

[Related: How to fire a UCLA professor: Inside the procedures behind faculty dismissal]

Some departments also leave lecturers out of major decisions when it comes to undergraduate education and faculty, Lipman said. She added that her department slashed the number of available teaching assistants and grading staff, making it difficult to grade students’ assignments.

“We have probably more knowledge when it comes to education than many of our Senate siblings,” Lipman said. “We all do similar work, but we don’t have any share in governance or decision making at the university – and it’s a shame, because it’s a wealth of knowledge that would be to the benefit of the students.”

UC-AFT proposed a bargaining item in March that would protect lecturers’ academic freedom and free speech, Lipman said.

Lipman alleged that when she was approved for her continuing lecturer appointment, the university told her to refrain from making political statements while teaching. UCLA Media Relations did not respond in time to a request for comment on the teaching guidelines the university gives its lecturers.

The bargaining item would allow lecturers to discuss current events in their courses without fear of repercussions, she added.

Amid UCLA’s budget uncertainty, it is hard to ensure appointments are safe, Griffey said.

Luce said discrepancies between ex-UCLA Chief Financial Officer Stephen Agostini’s reported $425 million deficit for the university, and the interim CFO’s March projection – which stood at $220 million – make it difficult for the union to understand the current state of the university’s finances. Interim CFO Reem Hanna-Harwell replaced the former CFO after Agostini alleged to the Daily Bruin that past UCLA administrators had mismanaged the university’s finances. Hanna-Harwell said in a March 26 email that higher deficit estimates previously reported in the media were inaccurate, as they included spending requests that had not yet been approved.

[Related: Interim CFO says UCLA’s budget deficit is markedly lower than previous estimates]

“This lack of transparency around the numbers means that there isn’t a consensus picture of what the finances really are,” she said.

Lipman said she wants to see greater resources and support for students at UC schools.

“We’re fighting against the degradation of the quality of education at the UC,” she said.