CSU teachers, other workers launch week-long strike amid salary dispute

Nearly 30,000 faculty members and other employees launched their promised strike across the California State University system Monday morning Jan. 22 as pickets went up at campuses around the nation’s largest public university system. The union vowed that the walkout would last until Friday unless an agreement could be reached over pay and other concerns.

The California Faculty Association, the union representing 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors, and coaches across the 23-campus CSU system, vowed to stage the strike after rejecting a 5% salary increase proposal from the CSU earlier this month. Other issues include workload, health and safety concerns, parental leave and class sizes.

Pickets went up at 8 a.m. Monday, Jan. 22, with demonstrators at all campuses. Southern California schools affected include Cal State Los Angeles, Long Beach, Northridge, Dominguez Hills, Channel Islands, Fullerton, San Bernardino and Cal Poly Pomona.

Some union members were on the picket lines as early as 4:30 a.m. Monday — braving wet weather conditions. The strike is organized in three shifts, with the last scheduled to end at around 4:30 p.m. this afternoon.

“We are going to show up and just prepare to be wet and cold today,” Jenny Hall, an environmental studies professor at CSU Dominguez Hills said. “This first day, the most important thing (is) we are shutting down the campuses for the whole week. So don’t go to your classes this week. Don’t cross the picket line. Come back on Monday next week, on the 29th.”

A CSU spokeswoman, Amy Bentley-Smith, said the university — the largest public system in the country — was prepared for the walkout, and was working to ensure the least possible disruptions for students. All campuses will be open and operational throughout the duration of the strike, officials said, but added that students will be notified if their classes are cancelled.

Faculty members at CSULA and CSULB, though, confirmed Monday that a majority of of faculty on those campuses had cancelled their classes for the day.

“What I’ve heard on the ground is that faculty are canceling classes. We always expect there will be a minority of strike breakers — but the vast majority of us are canceling classes,” said Molly Talcott, a CSULA sociology professor and union leader on Monday. “We’re doing our best to communicate with students because that’s what we’re here for.

“The reason why we’re doing this — our students are the future professors,” Talcott added. “If we don’t fight for decent conditions now, it’s going to hurt them ultimately.”

Emily Berquist, a professor of history at CSULB, also said Monday that most faculty had cancelled classes despite the campus remaining open throughout the strike.

“If students have not heard from their instructor that their class is canceled, they should assume that it is being held as scheduled and go to class,” the CSU said in a Monday press release. “There have been no changes to the published spring academic calendar, and the strike will not interfere with students’ ability to complete their courses and graduate on time.”

CSUN spokeswoman Carmen Ramos Chandler said in a phone interview it’s been “a very quiet day” at the Northridge campus.

“The campus and library are open,” she said, adding that Monday was the first day of classes. “What happens with individual classes is up to the professors.”

She added that students had received a letter from the campus administration earlier with the information including links useful to students and campus visitors.

Student services, including Student Housing and Residential Life, the University Student Union and the Student Recreation Center, will remain open during the strike, according to a note posted on the CSUN website.

“Do not assume that all your classes will be canceled. Some faculty will still choose to hold classes,” the website said.

The CFA and the CSU, meanwhile, have been at the bargaining table for eight months working to nail down a new agreement before the labor contract expires this summer.

The union’s chief concern has been securing a 12% general salary increase for its members across the board to keep up with inflation, along with raising the salary floor for CFA’s lowest-paid members.

But the CFA is also working on nailing down a series of other provisions in their new contract, including securing additional mental health counselors for students, expanding parental leave, and giving faculty more manageable workloads.

“This is the first statewide faculty strike in the history of our union — we do this to defend public higher education in the state of California,” Stephen MacFarland, a labor studies professor at CSU Dominguez Hills said on the picket line Monday. “We are fighting for fair wages that keep up with inflation, increase in pay for our lowest paid lecturers. We don’t strike lightly.”

Cal State Chancellor Mildred García said in a video call with journalists on Friday, Jan. 19, that the university system had sought to avoid a strike but the union’s salary demands are simply not viable.

“We must work within our financial reality,” she said.

In December, CFA members staged one-day walkouts on four campuses in Los Angeles, Pomona, Sacramento and San Francisco to press for higher pay, more manageable workloads and increased parental leave.

CSU officials, after those walk–outs, announced that they would provide all instructional faculty, librarians, counselors and coaches with a general salary increase of 5% effective Jan. 31, rejecting demands for much higher increases and ending negotiations with the faculty union.

The average annual salary for a senior assistant librarian, for example, is currently $83,120, and the 5% would bump that to $87,276. And associate professors, who now average $105,226, would see their yearly pay rise to $110,487.

That offer, according to the CSU, is consistent with other contracts the system has already finalized with other unions, officials said.

Most recently, the CSU nailed down a contract with Teamsters Local 2010 — which represents skilled trade workers at 22 of the 23 CSU campuses. That union was set to join the CFA’s five-day strike this week, but called off their picket lines on Friday once the deal was reached.

The Teamsters contract must be ratified by the union membership and will be brought to the CSU Board of Trustees for approval at its March meeting. Skilled trades employees at the 23rd CSU school, Cal Maritime, are represented by a different union — IUOE International Union of Operating Engineers.

CFA, though, said the 5% salary raised offered by the CSU — which will go into effect at the start of the February pay period — wasn’t enough, and announced their intention to launch the five-day, campus-wide strike the same day it was offered.

“Everyone, here in the Inland Empire and California, knows that inflation and soaring costs put folks in a pinch,” Thomas Corrigan, a professor of communications at CSU San Bernardino, said Monday. “Faculty experienced those challenges, too, in part because our wages have not kept up with inflation.”

The CFA also contended that the CSU hasn’t been bargaining in good faith — a claim the university system rejects — citing lack of movement on the union’s concerns aside from salary raises.

For Freddi-Jo Bruschke, a geology lecturer at CSU Fullerton since 2008, another union concern is how faculty are treated.

“Faculty in general, lecturers in particular, have been treated very badly,” Bruschke said. “Conditions just keep getting worse. Our pay never goes up.”

Bruschke added that lecturers are considered temporary employees and work on three-month contracts.

“I never know if I’m going to have work. I never know how much work I’m going to have,” Bruschke said.

Union leaders, meanwhile, say they’re waiting on a better offer from CSU.

“It is their turn to submit a counter proposal to us. Because they were the ones that walked away from the table, they had the opportunity to issue us a counter proposal,” Talcott said. “They have yet to do that — so it’s really their turn. We’re waiting for them to come to us. If they don’t like our last proposal, we’re all ears to see what they’ve got.”

The CSU, for its part, has repeatedly said that CFA’s 12% salary raise proposal isn’t financially feasible — and isn’t sustainable long-term.

It would cost the CSU about $380 million per year in new spending to fund those raises, they said previously.

That’s an issue for the system, whose Board of Trustees recently OK’d 6% annual CSU tuition hikes over the next five years — the first tuition increase in more than a decade — in an effort to cover its $1.5 billion funding gap. The tuition increases will begin in fall 2024.

“The CSU remains committed to supporting our students,” the Monday news release said, “and entering into labor agreements that do not result in cuts to the academic and student supportive programs that make the CSU the most diverse and transformative university system in the nation.”

CSU vice chancellor for human resources Leora Freedman and other leaders, during the Friday press conference, also took issue with claims that the system could afford the CFA’s 12% increase request if they were to dip into their $2.5 billion reserves.

That money, Freedman said, is essentially untouchable — as all but $766 million of it is set aside for specific and critical campus obligations.

The remaining $766 million, Freedman added, is set aside as emergency reserves intended to keep all 23 CSU campuses operational in the event of an emergency or natural disaster situation.

That money, she added, is one-time funding — once it’s gone, it’s gone — and it can’t be used to pay for an ongoing cost like salary.

“It sounds like a lot of money, $766 million, but when you look at that amount, it equates to roughly 30 days of our operating budget,” Steve Relyea, the CSU’s chief financial officer said Friday. “And by board policy, our target is three to six months of reserve for that purpose.”

Relyea also added that it would be “reckless, and would put the institution and our students at risk,” to considering funding salary raises with the CSU’s reserves.

“In the end, we’ve got to protect this university for our students,” Relyea said. “We have to ensure that our students are going to be able to come to an institution where they get a quality education at a reasonable cost.”

Instead, the CSU’s most recent proposal included 15% general salary increases, or 5% annually, over the next three years across the board. The CFA also rejected that proposal, according to the CSU.

The CSU has also offered the Faculty Association two additional weeks of paid parental leave, according to its Monday news release, and to accept 13 other recommendations outlined in an a third-party fact finding report last year.

Those included improving the CSU’s alternative workload reduction program, increasing mental health counselors, creating gender-neutral bathrooms, and more.

“There are so many issues within the CSU system that need to be addressed,” CFA member and Cal Poly Pomona Counselor Maria Gisela Sanchez Cobo said. “I know many faculty teach one class here, one class there. They’re driving across their county to make ends meet — that impacts that quality of teaching, the quality of learning.

“And our inadequate counselor-to-student ratios — we have so many students who are facing significant barriers,” Sanchez Cobo added. “I’m fully hurt and disheartened that CSU management increased tuition for students. They have no funding, but they have enough for presidents’ raises and more and more administrators.”

CFA members specifically called out newly-appointed CSU chancellor García’s $796,000 annual salary — alongside a $96,000 yearly housing stipend, a $1,000 monthly car allowance, and other standard benefits offered to CSU employees — as evidence that the system has funding to support its faculty and lower-level workers.

“CSU management has upside-down priorities, and they continue to fund executives at high percentages,” Talcott said. “We’re living in an age of extreme historic inequality and unfortunately, right now, the CSU mirrors that. The pyramid that is the CSU has to be reshaped.”

And the CFA also has the support of local elected officials, including Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson — who spoke at CSULB’s campus during a press conference on Monday morning.

Richardson explained that his first job nearly two decades ago was working with the CFA at CSULB, where he worked to organize one of the union’s first strike authorization votes — noting his concern that 18 years later, not much has changed.

“(We’re building) the next generation of leaders right here — faculty and professional public employees,” Richardson said. “And what example do we set when we want them to go out and earn dignity and living wage when we don’t have dignity and living wage for faculty today?”

Bargaining is stopped for now — at least through the next week as the CFA embarks on its five-day strike. It will have to resume in the coming months before the contract expires this summer.

“We’ve successfully reached agreements with five unions in the past few months and we look forward to doing the same with the faculty union,” Freedman said. “We are ready to return to the table and remain hopeful that the union’s share our goal of reaching labor peace.”

Talcott noted that the CFA is also interested in establishing labor peace and getting back to negotiations.

“We will negotiate. So far we haven’t been able to get them to move into paying us in a way that just keeps pace with inflation, much less the other proposals,” Talcott said. “We want to settle — we want labor peace — but it has to be a just peace. And in the meantime, we strike.”

People coming to any CSU campus over the next week should expect to see picketers, the CSU’s Monday news release said, and may experience traffic delays.

“Access to campus will be maintained,” the release said,  “and offices and facilities will be open to provide services and resources to students to help them prepare for the new semester.”

The past year, meanwhile, has seen lots of labor activity in the country as health care professionals, Hollywood actors and writers and auto workers picketed for better pay and working conditions.

Statewide, new laws have granted workers more paid sick leave as well as increased wages for health care and fast food workers.

In 2022, teaching assistants and graduate student workers in the University of California System went on strike for a month, disrupting classes as the fall semester came to a close.

Olga Grigoryants, Gil Castro-Petres, Brittany Murray, Teresa Liu, Michael Slaten and Madison Hart, all from SCNG, as well as reporters from The Associated Press and City News Service, contributed to this report