CSUS faculty marches for new contract
Sacramento Bee 1/30/07
They marched across campus toward the Sacramento Hall administration building -- and through it -- carrying signs and chanting, "I don't want to strike -- but I will."
The crowd also railed against a proposed 10 percent student-fee hike and jeered campus administrators for their pay and perks. The demonstration was one in a series planned on CSU campuses across the state over the next month by the 23,000-member California Faculty Association, which is threatening to strike unless administrators offer a better contract.
Monday's lunchtime protest through the hallways of the administrative building got President Alexander Gonzalez's attention, but it was not particularly disruptive, said campus spokesman Frank Whitlatch.
Gonzalez heard the picketing from his office, Whitlatch said in an e-mail, adding, "He was in a meeting at the time, which continued as scheduled."
Although the process for declaring a strike could be weeks -- if not months -- away, union organizers say after 20 months of failed contract talks, they're serious about a strike.
"They know we don't want to walk out of the classroom," said Lillian Taiz, a CSU Los Angeles history professor and statewide union organizer who attended Monday's rally. "This is what it's come to."
"Here is the message to the board of trustees and the administration," she yelled to the crowd. "You have finally pushed us too far."
CSUS student Eric Riviera-Juardo, 18, joined in the march. When his professors' jobs suffer, the teaching environment also suffers, he said.
"It's important our teachers feel appreciated and they are respected by the administration," he said.
CSU system officials say they've made an "excellent" offer for raising faculty pay over the next four years, amounting to 27 percent in some cases.
"The CSU wants to come to an agreement with the faculty union so its 23,000 faculty members can receive the salary and medical benefits they deserve," according to a statement issued Monday by the CSU chancellor's office in Long Beach.
Union leaders say that too much of the offer is discretionary and is more like 14 percent over four years.
Professors at CSU earn, on average, $71,000, according to the California Postsecondary Education Commission. Many newcomers are making around $50,000 and say they're feeling more pinched by paychecks frozen by recent state budget cuts and the lapsed contract.
The Legislature gave CSU extra money this year for raises and other costs, but the funds for faculty pay are being held until the contract issues are resolved.
Instead, faculty members -- who have received one raise in the last four years -- are seething after the CSU board of trustees approved two rounds of pay raises for campus presidents like Gonzalez and CSU executives since 2005.
"It sends a signal that nobody cares about us," said CSUS criminal justice professor Cecil Canton, a union organizer. "Faculty are mad. Faculty are very, very upset at how they're being treated. ... If it means strike, that's what we'll do."
David Wagner, human resources vice president at CSUS, said the contract offer to faculty is reasonable. An academic job at a state university also includes job security and health and retirement benefits not common in the private sector, he said.
"We're still talking," he said. "The strike idea is premature and makes assumptions about the process not working, and I hope ... we can reach an agreement."