Cal State Union Agrees to More Talks

Chronicle of Higher Education 4/6/07

By Eric Hoover

California State University administrators and unionized faculty members agreed on March 25 to continue negotiations for 10 days in an effort to reach a new contract. Both sides said they hoped the agreement would prevent a systemwide faculty strike, which union members had planned to begin with a series of "rolling walkouts" in April.

Faculty members and administrators agreed to base their negotiations on a 37-page report by an independent fact finder. The report's author, Sylvia Skratek, a former Washington State senator, recommended that the university system raise faculty salaries by almost 25 percent by 2010, among other recommendations. That increase would close the double-digit gap between the salaries of California State's 23,000 faculty members and those of instructors at comparable universities, according to the report.

John Travis, president of the California Faculty Association and a political-science professor at Humboldt State University, said he was encouraged by the latest agreement. "It's an opportunity to work within the framework of the fact-finding report to find a settlement," he said.

Cal State officials said they would not discuss details of those negotiations until a deal was completed.

"I'm optimistic that a settlement can be reached," said Charles B. Reed, California State's chancellor. "We have a framework to work with ... and everybody has good intentions to seek a settlement."

The faculty's union agreed that it would not hold any strikes on any of the system's 23 campuses while the negotiations continued.