Cal State faculty plans to strike as officials reject a 12% salary increase
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Barring a breakthrough in negotiations, the California State University faculty will go on one-day strikes at four campuses next week as they fight for 12% wage hikes this academic year plus other key concessions — increases that the system of nearly 460,000 students says it cannot afford.
The action would dash hopes of a labor peace between the union of 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors, and coaches on one end and management of the nation’s largest public four-year university system on the other. And it would only be the beginning: If Cal State leadership doesn’t meet faculty demands, union leadership is promising more labor unrest in 2024.
“The decision was made to start on the smaller side…to allow us to give some space to escalate,” said Kevin Wehr, bargaining team chair for the California Faculty Association and a professor at Sacramento State. “We don’t feel the need necessarily to go from zero to 60.”
The planned dates and campuses are:
- Dec. 4, Cal Poly Pomona
- Dec. 5, San Francisco State
- Dec. 6, CSU Los Angeles
- Dec. 7, Sacramento State
The four schools are among the largest in the system and combined enroll around 105,000 students. The labor walkouts are meant to signal to Cal State leadership that the union is capable of quickly organizing its members.
“We’re going to demonstrate to them that we can shut down any campus we want with only a couple of weeks’ notice,” Wehr said, who added the union doesn’t plan to stage any other work stoppages in December.
Cal State officials will hold a virtual press conference Friday to discuss the state of play between the system and the California Faculty Association. Friday will also mark the end of a state labor mediation process that began in August. By then a fact-finding report, written by a third-party labor negotiator, should become public, shedding more light on why the two sides are at loggerheads.
Last month 95% of faculty members who voted approved a resolution granting union leaders the ability to call for a strike. The union refused to say what percentage of its membership took part in that vote. In response, a Cal State spokesperson told CalMatters then that it “remains committed to the collective bargaining process and reaching a negotiated agreement with the (faculty union) as we have done with five of our other employee unions in recent weeks.”
In the past month, Cal State has come to agreements with five other unions representing around 30,000 non-academic staff. The labor deals ensured that Cal State wouldn’t contend with all its unionized workers striking, which would have been calamitous for the system. A smaller union of about 1,100 workers in the trades went on strike for one day this month.
Cal State lacks revenue
Cal State has grappled with what it says are insufficient revenues to properly educate its students. In May, officials said the system needs to generate at least $1.5 billion more annually to provide students the academic, cultural and supportive services they need.
That report triggered a multi-month discussion about upping revenue, culminating with the system’s board of trustees approving tuition hikes of 6% for each of the next five years, starting next fall. But even those hikes aren’t enough to fully fund the system, Cal State officials said. The faculty union and student groups bitterly opposed those hikes. The union also released an accounting study last month that argued Cal State can tap more of its reserves to cover academic expenses, such as faculty pay.
The impasse over finances and tuition played out in the same year Cal State’s new chancellor received a nearly $800,000 base salary — 66% more than what a predecessor earned in 2020. Last year several campus presidents received raises of as much as 29% after a system report said many were underpaid.
In its most recent offer on Monday, Cal State leaders proposed to the faculty union 5% raises this year and two years of subsequent 5% raises between 2024-25 and 2025-26. On paper that adds up to 15% across three years, above the 12% faculty seek in 2023-24.
‘Lack of trust’
But those future hikes are contingent on the system receiving funding that Gov. Gavin Newsom has promised Cal State for the next three years as part of his five-year compact of 5% annual increases. These are promised, but not guaranteed, jumps in state support in exchange for improvements in graduation rates and other academic advances. Newsom and the Legislature approved the 5% increases in state aid to Cal State — and the University of California — in each of the last two years, despite facing a multi-billion deficit in June.
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