Faculty at Pennsylvania’s State-Owned Colleges Launch First-Ever Classroom Strike

Faculty members at Pennsylvania’s 14 state-owned colleges and universities hit the picket lines on Wednesday morning as the system’s faculty union declared a strike over failed contract negotiations. It’s the first ever classroom strike in the history of the system, which enrolls more than 100,000 students.

Negotiations over a new contract for the system’s roughly 5,000 faculty members fell apart late Tuesday night, with the union and the administration giving differing accounts of what had been offered. Meanwhile, on Wednesday morning, after the strike became official, the state’s Democratic governor — Tom Wolf — urged the union and administrators to go back to the negotiating table.

“I am extremely disappointed in the failure of (the State System) and APSCUF to reach an agreement,” Mr. Wolf said, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “The resulting strike is detrimental to the system and will have far-reaching effects for years to come.”

But the system still instructed students to attend class. The Post-Gazette reports that some students at system campuses found empty classrooms, while some joined the professors on the picket lines.

The newspaper has a developing account of the strike on several campuses.

This is not the first time the faculty union, the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, has threatened a strike amid negotiations — but it’s the first time it has followed through on the threat.