CSUC strike vote results to be announced Wednesday

Enterprise-Record 3/20/07

Wednesday, the union that represents faculty, coaches, counselors and librarians in the California State University system -- including the Chico campus -- will announce the outcome of its strike vote.

For the last two weeks members of the California Faculty Association on all 23 CSU campuses have been voting on a resolution to authorize a strike. The balloting ended last week and the California League of Women Voters are tabulating the results.

At 10 a.m. Wednesday the CFA leadership will hold a press conference on the campus of Cal State-Dominguez Hills to announce the results.

For the last 22 months the union and the CSU have been negotiating. When no agreement was reached, a non-binding fact-finding process began, which will be completed by the end of this month.

With 417,000 students, the CSU is the largest public university in the nation, and, if a job action is authorized, it could potentially be the largest higher education strike in U.S. history.

According to both the CFA and the CSU, the core issue is money. The union claims the faculty is paid 18 percent less than comparable institutions around the nation.

Both sides claim to have made offers or counter offers that would raise salaries by about 24 percent over four years, but both sides dispute how the other's figures are computed.