A strike is averted, at public's expense

O.C. Register 4/5/07

The tentative agreement reached this week between the Cal State University system's administration and its strike-threatening union was described by union President John Travis as "good for CSU, good for our students, good for the faculty, and, frankly, it will be good for California." Well, maybe three out of four.

The CSU's 23 campuses will be better off without rolling two-day strikes beginning next week, which the union threatened if its demands weren't met. All 400,000 students also will benefit by not missing classes. Most certainly the CSU 23,500-member faculty will benefit from hefty guaranteed pay raises that will elevate top-level professors' salary to $105,465 a year – not counting an automatic "step" of another 3 percent over the four-year period. Not bad.

The question is whether the tentative agreement, which must yet be ratified by union membership and the CSU Board of Trustees, "will be good for California," as claimed.

As we previously noted regarding the contract dispute, few private-sector employees are guaranteed pay raises, let alone 20.7 percent over four years, and an additional 3 percent "step" raise, as CSU instructors are.

Private-sector employees might even expect no raise when their employers fail to turn a profit or hit troubled times.

Not so state government workers. Despite a state budget that is projected again to run nearly a billion dollars in the red, all CSU instructors are guaranteed their raises. The ship of state may be sinking, but these folks are assured to stay afloat on a sea of tax dollars.

Despite some relatively minor savings by delaying "step" pay raises, it seems the CSU administration probably came out on the short end of this negotiation. "We didn't get everything we wanted," union President Travis commented. "But we got close to everything we wanted."

It's also significant that the union credits much of its success to the threatened strike, the first ever authorized by its 11,000-member union, with 94 percent voting "yes."

Cecil Canton, head of the union's Sacramento chapter, was quoted in the Sacramento Bee saying without the threat of strike, the tentative agreement would not have been favorable to the faculty.

The disproportionate influence of public employee unions is partly due to their ability to grind public services to a halt by walking off the job. Unlike the private sector, where customers can find alternative providers, public employees provide monopoly services that leave their customers no alternative.

Add to that the CSU instructors' negotiated "right" not to be fired if they go on strike and the inherent job protection provided by tenure, and it's clear that not only is the college administration at a distinct disadvantage in pay disputes with its employees, but so too is the public.