A week ago, California State University officials walked out of a bargaining session 30 minutes after it began. Late Monday, after the first day of a historic systemwide strike, they returned and agreed to a tentative deal.
The California Faculty Association had been protesting for higher pay, among other demands. Kevin Wehr, the union’s lead negotiator, said it got significant concessions from the system, including raises, pay floors, parental leave, and workload for counselors. The union accepted compromises on demands related to gender-neutral restrooms and lactation rooms based on an independent “fact finder” report, in which recommendation were made by a third party, he said.
Under the tentative deal, which must be approved by the union membership, faculty secured a 5-percent raise retroactively effective July 2023, and another 5 percent this year effective in July 2024 — contingent on state funding for the system not being reduced. For faculty, that amounts to a 10-percent raise in the next six months, Wehr said, and a significant improvement over the system’s prior “last best offer” of 5 percent starting in January. (The union had demanded a 12-percent salary increase.)
Wehr said the most significant move from Cal State was raising the floor for lowest-paid faculty, with some expected to see a pay bump of more than 20 percent. The university also agreed to increase parental leave from six to 10 weeks, up from the six to eight weeks recommended in the “fact finder” report the system had previously indicated it would agree to.
The union accepted less ambitious plans to create gender-neutral restrooms with signage, rather than building new ones, and lactation spaces across the system, with details to be hammered out in the final agreement. Notably, the CFA also agreed to make this year’s 5-percent raise contingent on state funding, which had been a sticking point in negotiations. Wehr said that the union had previously rejected contingency on future increases to state funding; the agreement reached on Monday makes this year’s wage increase contingent on state funding not dropping below current levels.
“I am extremely pleased and deeply appreciative that we have reached common ground with CFA that will end the strike immediately,” said the system’s chancellor, Mildred García, in a statement. “The agreement enables the CSU to fairly compensate its valued, world-class faculty while protecting the university system’s long-term financial sustainability. With the agreement in place, I look forward to advancing our student-centered work — together — as the nation’s greatest driver of social mobility and the pipeline fueling California’s diverse and educated work force.”
The agreement brings to an end the first systemwide faculty strike in California State University’s history. Michelle Ramos Pellicia, a linguistics professor at Cal State-San Marcos and a CFA board member, described the atmosphere on the picket lines yesterday as “effervescent.”
There is no official participation tally, but instructors who spoke to The Chronicle perceived the strike as a success. One Cal State-Monterey Bay professor described their campus on Monday as a “ghost town” and a student at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona remarked how empty the campus felt.
California State University said in a press conference Friday that it was committed to keeping all 23 campuses operational. It also asked striking faculty members to report their absence so that pay could be docked. Cal State released forms on all 23 campuses asking students to report if faculty members did not show up to classes, a move Christina Checel, the system’s associate vice chancellor for labor and employee relations, said was to gauge the impact of the strike on students. Wehr described these tactics as “intimidating, threatening, and demoralizing.”
Kate Ozment, an associate professor of English at Cal Poly Pomona, said the way faculty has been treated “has radicalized people who I think are usually moderate.”
Edwin Lopez, a student at Cal State-Monterey Bay, said the picket line there was well attended by students. The union’s success in organizing a systemwide strike may help explain why the system was willing to return to the negotiating table on Monday night, said Meghan O’Donnell, a humanities professor at Monterey Bay.
“They wouldn’t have come to us at this point seeking to end the strike at the last hour of yesterday if we had not been successful in shutting the CSU down,” O’Donnell said.
The specific language of the compromise will be hashed out in the coming weeks, and the final document will need to be ratified by all CFA members. Wehr said he thinks the deal will be ratified “overwhelmingly.”
Not all faculty members are happy with the deal, however. Ozment said she believes the union got “a decent outcome” but could have done much more. “We over promised and under delivered,” she said, “and as a boots-on-the-ground, rank and file member, I’m the one who is going to have to reestablish trust with my chapter and friends who believed me when I said we could do better.”
