Faculty protesting pay at CSU campuses
Union-Tribune 1/23/07
Yesterday, about 75 faculty members chanted and carried protest signs outside the CSU San Marcos library, many of them wearing stickers declaring: “I don't want to strike but I will.”
Faculty members at San Diego State University are set to picket Jan. 30.
The union representing the 23,000 faculty members statewide is threatening walkouts over pay and working conditions, and contract talks are now being mediated.
It's more than just quibbling over pay raises that Cal State San Marcos history professor Jeff Charles said got him walking his first picket line yesterday.
“As a historian, I know that California has a promise to its citizens to provide a quality education,” Charles said.
He and many educators criticize the state for defaulting on that promise by raising tuition and executive pay, while keeping faculty pay low and class sizes big. The CSU anticipates an additional 10 percent fee increase on top of the 76 percent increase since 2000, which Charles and many educators fear will turn college into an impossible dream for all but the affluent.
CSU officials maintain that their last offer to the faculty was generous, a four-year pact with 4 percent to 6.5 percent pay increases annually.
While picketing is not unusual by faculty or students in the CSU, a CSU spokeswoman said walkouts are rare. In November, union leaders staged a sit-in that shut down the CSU board of trustees meeting.
Cal State San Marcos junior Bernardo Nelson watched the faculty rally from the sidelines, saying he supported them and knows how they feel, having been part of the massive Southern California 4½-month grocery strike in 2003-04.
The prospect of losing her professors to a strike did not upset student Brittney Raedel as she read faculty informational fliers explaining their protest from the sidelines.
“I think they deserve a raise. Teachers are never appreciated,” said Raedel, a business major.