CSU faculty union OKs statewide strike
Press-Democrat 3/22/07
"This is truly a historic day, the first time the California State University faculty have voted on whether or not to conduct a strike," said John Travis, a Humboldt State University professor and president of the California Faculty Association.
The vote, taken over two weeks, was announced Wednesday at California State University, Dominguez Hills in Carson.
The CSU chancellor's office said campuses would remain open in event of a strike, and some professors and instructors are expected to hold classes.
"We expect classes to continue. There will be faculty teaching," CSU spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow said.
"There will be some disruption, but the majority of the classes will continue, the student union will remain open, the libraries will remain open, the students living in the dorms will have services," she said.
CSU trustees have scheduled a meeting Sunday to take action, which could include unilaterally implementing a contract.
CSU officials declined to comment on the dispute, saying they were honoring a 10-day news blackout after an independent fact-finder delivered its recommendations to the union and the trustees.
After two years of talks, negotiations between CSU and the faculty association broke down in September over salaries and the dispute was submitted to fact-finding. The fact-finding committee's recommendation was given to both parties last week and is scheduled to be made public Monday.
The association represents 500 teachers, librarians and coaches at SSU, where 300 of them are union members. Statewide, it has 10,100 members and represents 25,000 teachers, librarians and coaches.
The union said 81 percent of its members voted, with 94 percent voting to authorize the association board to call a strike.
Because of the size of the CSU system, Travis said, "if we strike, it will be the largest strike in the history of higher education in this country."
Lillian Taiz, a Cal State L.A. professor and the association vice president, said two-day rolling strikes across the 23 campuses would be staged over several weeks in April and May. The duration was chosen to have a minimum impact on students.
At Sonoma State, the turnout and percent voting for the strike was marginally higher than at other campuses, said Andy Merrifield, president of the association's SSU chapter.
He said that with pickets at all SSU entrances, a strike could resonate beyond the classroom to include construction workers at the Green Music Center and service workers making deliveries.
"We think this will have a disruptive effect on the entire Sonoma State campus," Merrifield said. "It will not be business as usual."
The university system's faculty is asking for a 25 percent wage increase over four years, which Travis said would close the pay gap between CSU instructors and new tenure-track faculty and those at comparable institutions.
CSU is offering a package that it says is worth 24 percent, but faculty representatives say they believe it is actually only 13 percent to 14 percent.
"Their increase has a number of threads woven into it and when you pull the threads it unravels," Travis said. "They cost things differently than we do."
New CSU tenure-track faculty start at about $50,000 a year, the average salary for tenure-track is $71,000, and the average for faculty with 20 years of experience is $86,000.
Instructors, who teach 60 percent of CSU classes, earn an average of $58,000 if they are full time. Part-time instructors, if they worked on a full-time basis, would earn $43,000 a year.