CSU strike averted for now
Orange County Register 3/26/07
"In this business you need to stay optimistic," said CSU Chancellor Charles Reed after a Sunday meeting of the bargaining committee. "We think we have a good framework to reach an agreement."
Officials with the 11,000-member California Faculty Association that bargains on behalf of some 24,000 employees in the 23-campus system, had been prepared to call a strike as early as today.
Union members voted in the last few weeks by 94 percent to authorize their leadership to call a strike which, if held, would be the largest strike in the history of American higher education.
Officials said any strike would be two-day walkouts in April or May.
On Sunday, about two-dozen union members sat outside the CSU headquarters wearing T-shirts that read "I don't want to strike but I will."
The CSU's faculty contract expired in June 2005, and the two sides have been unable to agree on a new contract.
Major issues of contention including the amount of salary increases, a proposal by administrators that faculty pay the same parking fees as students and staff, workloads, disputes over early retirement benefits, the role of arbitration and grievances in the disciplinary process.
A study by the California Postsecondary Education Commission found that faculty members earn, on average, 18 percent less than their counterparts in other states.
The fact-finding panel found "there was no dispute … that faculty at CSU were lagging in double-digits behind their comparable institutions."
CSU officials say they have offered 24 percent salary increases over four years. Union leaders say the value of those increases is really about 15 percent.