CSU Responds as Faculty PIcket at Cal State East Bay
CBS-5 San Francisco 1/17/07
Professors planned an informational picket today in conjunction with pickets scheduled to take place at all 23 CSU campuses this month.
Keith said the California Faculty Association, made up of approximately 23,000 CSU faculty members, has been bargaining with the Cal State system for 18 months. The association has yet to reach an agreement deemed fair by union members, according to faculty association spokesman and faculty member Tom McCoy.
Keith said CSU has offered a 24.5 percent salary increase over three years with a 4 percent increase over the first year that will be retroactive to July.
McCoy said this is "blatantly not true'' and insisted the university had only offered a 14 percent increase.
According to McCoy, full professors are "paid 26.7 percent behind professors at comparable institutions nationwide, according to data released by the California Postsecondary Commission last fall.''
"The CFA is the only union that we have not come to an agreement with,'' said Keith, who was pleased to announce an agreement Tuesday with the CSU Employees Union. It represents university workers besides faculty.
McCoy said salary disparities between professors and those in management positions represent "the corporatization of the university system.''
"We are being treated like hired hands,'' he said.
The chancellor of CSU earns $360,000 per year, according to Keith.
McCoy says he earns a fraction of that amount.
He said students are being shortchanged as well because increased students fees have "caused most needy students to be unable to attend the university, and some of the campuses that serve the poorer students are seeing drops in enrollment.''
California Faculty Association spokesman John Hess said the drop in enrollment has caused universities like Cal State East Bay to owe millions of dollars to the state university system when projected enrollment goals are not met.
"I know they have had difficulty meeting enrollment in the past but their applications are up considerably,'' countered Keith.
"We have the lowest student fees of any public university system across the nation. Our board of trustees has adopted a policy that no student pays more than one third of the cost of their education,'' she said.
If faculty and the university cannot reach an agreement, more than 400,000 students could see their professors strike.
"I think we are a lot closer to a strike than we ever have been,'' Hess said.