Faculty members at the nation’s largest public-university system are poised to go on strike this month, adding an influential voice to the recent uptick in labor disputes across higher ed.
The California Faculty Association, the union representing 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors, and coaches across the 23-campus California State University system, plans to strike from January 22 to 26. They will be joined by the Teamsters Local 2010, which represents skilled trade workers on 22 CSU campuses.
Cal State plans to keep all campuses open during the strike, said Hazel Kelly, a spokesperson for the system, which enrolls about 460,000 students.
Faculty members, adjunct instructors, and graduate students nationwide have been calling for higher pay as the cost of living has risen in many cities, as well as job protections for instructors without tenure, benefits for parents, and revised sexual-harassment policies. In late 2022, the biggest strike in U.S. higher-education history disrupted the University of California system, when 48,000 graduate instructors, postdocs, and academic researchers walked off the job for six weeks.
These victories have boosted workers’ confidence and encouraged more strikes, said Ken Jacobs, co-chair of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California at Berkeley.
Here’s what you need to know about what led to the planned work stoppage at Cal State.
Negotiations broke down last week over salaries.
The faculty union is calling for a 12-percent salary increase beginning in July and a host of other priorities including parental leave, lactation rooms, and more gender-neutral restrooms. Shortly after the parties stopped bargaining last week, Cal State announced a 5-percent salary increase effective January 31, saying it was the system’s final offer.
The bargaining process has been rocky from the start, with the two sides meeting for a total of only four days last summer before the union declared an impasse. Subsequent efforts to compromise — via both an independent mediator and a “fact finder” report, in which a third party made recommendations — failed to produce a deal. Both sides rejected a proposed 7-percent raise.
The union then staged four one-day strikes last month at Cal Poly Pomona and Cal State campuses in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Francisco.
This would be the first time that faculty at all 23 Cal State campuses walk off the job.
The California Faculty Association planned a similar five-day systemwide strike in 2016 to demand a 5-percent salary raise that academic year, but both parties compromised on a delayed 10.5-percent increase over three years. Something similar could happen before next week.
“I’m going to be working my tail off helping to organize my campus for a successful strike, but should management call, I’m ready to talk. I hope they do,” said Kevin Wehr, a professor of sociology at Sacramento State and chair of the union’s bargaining team.
Union representatives and labor experts say that’s unlikely to happen, however. So what’s different this time? There’s the emboldened labor movement, but also rising costs that have led to bigger asks.
A 12-percent salary increase would be the largest all-at-once raise for Cal State faculty, said Wehr. But he emphasized that adjusted for California’s cost of living, that’s just a 2-percent bump. “It’s unprecedented times,” he said.
Cal State’s budget woes are looming in the background.
University officials say they don’t have the money to meet the union’s salary demands. What’s more, if Cal State agreed to increase faculty salaries above 5 percent, it would trigger “me-too” clauses in contracts that the system has already signed with its other unions, which would allow them to renegotiate for higher pay.
A report released by Cal State projected a ballooning funding gap of 29 to 41 percent by 2030.
To plug that hole, Cal State’s governing board voted last fall to approve a 34-percent tuition increase over five years, which the faculty union opposed. Over the summer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, also committed to a 5-percent base increase in state support over the next three years.
But Newsom announced last week that he would defer Cal State’s first funding increase until fiscal year 2025-26. Cal State will still be able to borrow that money in the near term against the state’s future commitment.
Even with both new funding streams, the system could still be short of the money it needs.
Margarita Berta-Ávila, a professor in Sacramento State’s College of Education and vice president of the union, argues that none of that matters. She points to a study the union commissioned that found that the university was “in very strong financial condition” and could afford the 12-percent salary increase without new state or tuition dollars.
A Cal State spokesperson told CalMatters that any excess money was “one-time reserves” that were not ongoing and needed for a rainy-day fund.
“We’re not satisfied with that response — that they can’t address it or it’s just one-time money — when they have more structural surplus based on the neutral-party audit that was done,” Berta-Ávila said.
A report commissioned by Cal State from Mercer, a consulting firm, found that the system’s faculty are paid similarly to other public universities. The union argues that the report did not account for cost of living in California, which is higher than the national average, according to RentCafe.
Several union officials have also pointed to higher salary increases for system presidents and administrators. A CalMatters analysis found that Cal State presidents saw a 43-percent pay increase between 2007 and 2022, versus only 30 percent for professors and 22 percent for full-time lecturers.
Faculty members expect pressure from Sacramento will help end the dispute.
John Logan, chair of the department of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, said that more strike action could occur, but he expects that Cal State officials will come under pressure from the governor and state lawmakers to make a deal.
“I don’t think we’re gonna have strike action that will continue deep into the spring semester,” Logan said, “because I think that would be disastrous for the universities and for the students.”
