Sonoma State faculty to join statewide CSU strike starting Jan. 22

It looks like students returning to the California State University system’s 23 campuses for the spring semester — including Sonoma State — will have some free time on their hands.

Starting Jan. 22, the first day of classes, the CSU system’s 29,000 faculty will go on strike for five days — a measure they were forced to take, according to leaders of the California Faculty Association, after CSU officials abruptly walked out of labor negotiations Tuesday while imposing a short-term 5% raise for the affected employees.

Sonoma State spokesman Jeffery Keating announced Wednesday that the Rohnert Park campus would be “open and operational” from Jan. 22-26, the days of the planned strike.

While “Classes have not been canceled during that period, and we do not intend to cancel any classes,” he wrote, “Individual faculty members might decide to strike that week, which could result in individual classes being canceled.”

In his statement addressing the labor dispute, Sonoma State President Ming Tung “Mike” Lee came close to expressing solidarity with his professors:

“The University supports faculty and staff in their efforts to maintain a living wage. We support their right to be heard on this issue and on the other workplace issues of concern to them.”

At an impasse

Tuesday’s bargaining session between the Chancellor’s team and CFA representatives ended abruptly when CSU negotiators walked out after 20 minutes, canceling the remaining 4 days of talks.

The two sides had been engaged in “reopener” bargaining, in which parts of the existing contract can be negotiated before it expires in June.

The CFA was asking for a 12% raise this fiscal year, following raises of 4% and 3% the previous two years.

While that 12% looks like a big number, noted Napoleon Reyes, a Sonoma State criminology professor who is the university’s CFA chapter president, the increase would account for money the union contends is owed faculty following the pandemic, and two years of “historic” inflation.

As the cost of living rose inexorably, “the faculty lost a lot,” he said.

University leaders had countered with 5% for 2024. By terminating negotiations Tuesday, CSU management was permitted to impose its final offer — that 5% increase — on the faculty. University officials said Tuesday the union’s salary demands were not financially viable and would have necessitated layoffs and other cuts.

California is facing a projected $38 billion deficit in the 2024-25 fiscal year, and Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing funding deferrals for the UC and CSU system of at least $500 million to help cover the shortfall, along with $8.5 billion in spending cuts, the largest affecting climate and housing programs.

Faculty association representatives, however, say the CSU has enough money to meet their members’ pay demands.

“Instead of showing care and concern for the issues faculty have raised repeatedly at the bargaining table since last May,” the CFA’s Board of Directors shared in an email to membership, “Chancellor Mildred García and her team seem intent on a campaign of insult and intimidation.”

Management’s “imposition,” the board said, gave it “no other choice” than to move forward with its plan for the first systemwide strike in the history of the 63-year-old CSU system, the nation’s largest public four-year university system, with over 450,000 students.

Many of those students are still feeling sticker shock following a controversial decision by the trustees for the CSU system, who in September approved a 34% tuition hike over the next five years, starting in the 2024-25 academic calendar, when Sonoma State students can expect to pay an extra $344 for tuition.

By 2028-2029, annual SSU tuition alone will jump to $7,682.

With fees included, Sonoma State has the third highest tuition and fees at just over $8,000 according to a CSU cost of attendance breakdown of the 23 campuses.

During a series of one-day work stoppages in December — at Cal Poly-Pomona, San Francisco State, Sacramento State and Cal State-Los Angeles — the faculty union vowed to go forward with a broader strike, if its requests were not met. The upcoming strike will make good on that threat.

Striking in solidarity with the faculty union will be members of Teamsters Local 2010, which represents 14,000 skilled workers in California higher education.

Money not the only issue

Reyes emphasized that the bargaining terminated by CSU management wasn’t limited to economic issues. The faculty is also fighting for a cap on class sizes — “there’s been a creeping increase” in recent years, he said, “and that effects how we teach” — and increased numbers of counselors for students at member schools.

The faculty also seeks higher pay “for our lowest paid lecturers,” said Reyes, “who earn so much less” than their counterparts in the UC system.

“What they’re doing now across the CSU,” he said, “is assigning lecturers just a few classes,” so they fall under the threshold that would qualify them for benefits.

Asked how the student body might react to missing out on a week’s worth of instruction, Reyes replied, “It’s not like we’re only fighting for faculty. Our ask involves class sizes, counseling, health and safety on campus — this effects students directly.

“Our students know what’s at stake.”

It wasn’t just soaring inflation in 2021 and 2022 that spurred faculty to ask for a 12% raise this year, said Damien Wilson, the Hamel Family Chair in Wine Business with Sonoma State’s Wine Business Institute.

“We’ve been led down the garden path before in previous negotiations.” Each time, he said, when the CSU has pledged wage increases “subject to budgetary constraints,” those increases were not forthcoming.

With this current contract set to expire in June, the two sides are likely to return to the bargaining table in coming weeks or months, to begin negotiations on the next contract.

‘Disappointed and angry’

Stefan Kiesbye, a professor in Sonoma State’s English department, described CSU management’s decision to abandon the bargaining table as “super disappointing.”

Tenured professors at Cal State universities make far less than their UC counterparts, “and there’s a reason for that,” he allowed, “but still, we’re doing the work.”

The last few years, he said, have been “really, really hard.”

This year, his ninth at Sonoma State, has marked the first time that the amount of his mortgage dipped under 50% of his net monthly pay, said Kiesbye.

“And I have a very modest house, and a very modest mortgage.

“I can’t support my family on my salary alone, and it’s only me and my wife and our dog.”

For the CSU negotiating team “to not even have the courtesy to sit there and bargain, for them to walk away, even though they’d scheduled four days to negotiate — that was a slap in the face,” said Kiesbye.

“I was disappointed and angry at this institution that has so little regard for its professors.”

Kiesbye isn’t teaching this semester, but he will be picketing.

“It’s my sabbatical,” he said, “but I’ll be there.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on X/Twitter @ausmurph88.