Faculty Union for California State U. Authorizes 'Rolling Walkouts' if Contract Negotiations Fail
Chronicle of Higher Education 3/22/07
John Travis, the president of the California Faculty Association, called it a "truly historic day" as he announced at a news conference the results of the union's first-ever strike vote, which took place over two weeks this month. "We are a faculty that is ready to walk off the job," he said.
The California Faculty Association represents 24,000 professors, instructors, librarians, counselors, and coaches in the university system. It has been negotiating with Cal State administrators for nearly two years to reach a new contract but has rejected the state system's salary offer. Contract negotiations are scheduled to end on Monday. If the two sides have not reached an agreement by then, union leaders say, it is within their rights to begin job actions.
If the faculty association calls a strike -- something union leaders say looks increasingly likely -- it could be the largest job action by professors in the history of American higher education, at least in terms of the number of instructors involved.
However, the job action the union has proposed is not a traditional strike, in which employees set out to withdraw their labor for as long as it takes to break the employer's will. Instead, the union has proposed a rolling series of walkouts, in which unionized instructors would step out of their classrooms to form picket lines for two days at a time, campus by campus. Clara Potes-Fellow, a spokeswoman for the California State system, said that should the strike go forward, all campuses would remain open. She said that more than half of the system's 23,000 faculty members do not belong to the union, and she expected many of them would hold classes through the walkouts.
Unlike the endurance test that a traditional strike often entails, Ms. Potes-Fellow said, the action authorized by the faculty association was "more like picketing, basically."
However, Mr. Travis, who is a professor of political science at Humboldt State University, said in an interview that the union's strategy may escalate. "It starts with the rolling walkouts," he said. "After that, the [union's] board of directors has the right to determine whether there should be additional actions."
Both sides agree that California State professors earn less than professors at comparable institutions across the country, a disparity that stems largely from a state-employee salary freeze that accompanied California's 2002 budget crisis. The state system has said that its salary offer -- which it describes as an average increase of 24 percent, achieved over a four-year period -- is all that it can afford.
But the union says the package actually amounts to an increase of only 14 or 15 percent for most professors and does not do enough to help them recover from the period of stagnant wages.
The union says its proposed salary package is structured differently and amounts to a 25.5-percent average increase over four years -- though the administration says the union's proposal actually entails a 30-percent average increase. According to the union, its proposal would cost $60-million to $80-million more than the state system's "last, best offer." Ms. Potes-Fellow, however, said the union's proposal would be $100-million more expensive.
The system's annual budget is a little over $4-billion.
As the end of the negotiating period has approached, the union has drawn as much attention as it can to the system's priorities in its use of that budget. The union has especially highlighted recent increases in compensation for administrators in an attempt to show that the system is unwilling, not unable, to meet the professors' salary demands (The Chronicle, February 28).
Both sides held out hope that the last few days of the negotiation process would see a resolution. Lillian Taiz, vice president of the union and a professor of history at Cal State at Los Angeles, said she hoped the strike vote itself would quicken that process.
"The magnitude of the vote sends a clear, clear message," Ms. Taiz said. "It is time to take this seriously and get down to business and settle this contract so we can all get back to the business of teaching the students."