CSU Profs to Rally at Trustees Meeting for 5% Raise

More than 1,000 California State University faculty members are expected to march and rally Tuesday at a CSU Board of Trustees meeting, continuing their push for a 5 percent salary increase.

Members of the California Faculty Association have already voted to authorize a strike if the union is unable to reach a contract agreement with the Long Beach-based CSU. At Tuesday’s rally, union members will wear red T- shirts with the slogan “I Don’t Want to Strike But I Will.”

“No one takes a strike vote lightly, especially faculty who have invested so much in their students,” CFA President Jennifer Eagan said. “The faculty are angry and justifiably so.”

The rally is being dubbed part of the CFA’s “Fight for Five,” a reference to their push for a 5 percent salary hike. The union is also calling for additional salary increases based on years of service.

The CSU chancellor’s office has offered 2 percent.

Eagan, a professor at Cal State East Bay, said the hiring of instructors has not kept up with the increase of student enrollment, and that CSU spending on instruction has decreased. The buying power of professors has declined, she said.

According to the CSU, there is a roughly $68.9 million funding gap between the union and university salary proposals. University officials said compensation issues are a top priority for the system.

Faculty were the only group of employees to receive salary increases and tenure-track salary promotions during the recession years, according to the CSU.

The university system acknowledged earlier that strike-authorization votes are common during collective bargaining, adding a strike “is not in the best interest of CSU students.”

In response to the vote results, CSU officials said the university “remains committed to the collective bargaining process and reaching a negotiated agreement with the California Faculty Association.”

“Fact-finding hearings are currently scheduled for Nov. 23 and Dec. 7. The approval of the strike vote gives CFA’s leadership the authority to initiate a strike or other concerted activities in the event that the parties do not reach an agreement at the conclusion of the statutory impasse procedure,” according to CSU.

According to CSU, about half of the university system’s 25,000 faculty are members of the CFA.

Union officials said a strike, if it happens, wouldn’t take place until next year, because faculty members are not allowed to stage a walkout until after a fact-finding process is completed.

—City News Service, photo courtesy of CFA