CSU faculty union OKs its first strike
San Bernardino County Sun 3/22/07
A strike, which would likely come in April, would be the product of rising anger among faculty members who feel the CSU system is headed in the wrong direction, with teacher pay lagging behind that at comparable institutions.
The strike authorization vote held over the last two weeks was decisive. Eighty-four percent of union members participated, and 94 percent of those who cast ballots favored allowing leaders to call a strike.
Tom Meisenhelder, union chapter president at Cal State San Bernardino, said he did not yet have figures for the turnout at his campus.
The union is considering holding two-day walkouts that would take place at different times at various campuses.
A panel consisting of a union and CSU representative and a neutral mediator submitted its report to a state labor agency this month. Their findings will be made public either Sunday or Monday, said Alice Sunshine, a union spokeswoman.
Sunshine said the union plans to hold a news conference Monday, and that leaders expect to give students advance notice about any walkout.
At CSUSB on Wednesday, with students scurrying across campus to take finals, stakeholders stopped to reflect on the possibility of a strike.
Lloyd Peake, who chairs the faculty senate, talked about how tensions between faculty and the CSU system have escalated. He said educators feel their university is on a downhill slide. He and colleagues have been critical of growing class sizes, large executive pay raises and increasing student fees.
Down the hall from Peake's office, Kerry Neal, director of development for the College of Business and Public Administration, fretted over how stalled contract negotiations could tarnish the CSU's image in the eyes of local philanthropists.
Maria Cleppe, a graduate student in counseling, said she didn't know much about current contract talks.
What's certain, though, is that a walkout at CSUSB would hurt students, Cleppe said. She said she opposes strikes unless leaders have exhausted all alternatives.
Frustration over contract talks are indicative of a larger dispute between faculty members and the CSU system, Peake said.
"It's just part of a mix of things that have faculty here upset, more so than I've seen since I came to the CSU," said Peake, a CSU system veteran of 18 years.
CSU administrators say they are asking faculty to accept a deal that includes a nearly 25 percent raise over four years. Union officials dispute that figure, saying only about a 15 percent raise is guaranteed under the CSU offer.
CSU officials say they can't do better than what they've put on the table. Though the CSU has $1.2 billion in reserves, officials say they can't use it on faculty salaries.
They note with irony that the union opposes student fee hikes - one of the university's two main sources of revenue - while asking for larger raises. State funding, the second major source of money, was cut by hundreds of millions of dollars in California's recent budget crisis, according to the CSU system.
In a statement Wednesday morning, CSU Chancellor Charles Reed noted that only dues-paying union members cast ballots in the strike authorization vote. The union represents about 10,000 of the CSU system's more than 23,000 faculty members, Reed said.