CSU Strike Settled - Pending vote

CSU Strike Settled _ Pending Vote of Members 

 The strike at the largest university system in the nation has ended ( subject to ratification vote by the faculty union.

Posted 

“The collective action of so many lecturers, professors, counselors, librarians and coaches over these last eight months forced C.S.U. management to take our demands seriously,” Charles Toombs, president of the union, said in a statement.

The deal would immediately increase salaries for all faculty members by 5 percent, retroactively to July 1, 2023, with another 5 percent raise to take effect July 1, 2024, according to union officials. It would also immediately raise the salary floor for the lowest-paid faculty members by $3,000, and increase paid parental leave to 10 weeks from six.

Mildred García, the chancellor of the university system, said in a statement Monday night that she was “extremely pleased” with the deal, adding that it “enables the C.S.U. to fairly compensate its valued, world-class faculty while protecting the university system’s long-term financial sustainability.”

I participated in the creation of this union and was a local official prior to retirement.

 

Sac State Strike Begins _ System Wide Strike

 Clouds, chills and the threat of rain didn’t dissuade Sacramento State faculty from forming the first picket line of the spring semester. Professors, lecturers, librarians, coaches and counselors shut down the California State University’s 23 campuses Monday just as many of their students returned for the spring semester. The week-long shutdown follows a series of rolling one-day strikes across four campuses in December. 

Roughly 75 people walked the picket line Monday outside Sacramento State, flanking the campus’ J Street entrance. The banners welcoming students back from break were covered with union-made signs that read, “Classes don’t start without us!” and “On strike! California Faculty Association.”

 This latest labor action at the nation’s largest university system rides the wave of union momentum in higher education created by the 2022 monthlong strike at the University of California system. Teaching assistants and graduate student workers disrupted classes across UC campuses as the fall semester concluded. 

The CFA, which represents 29,000 members, and university negotiators have spent nearly nine months haggling over salaries and other provisions as part of contract negotiation re-opener. Those non-salary demands include increased parental leave, greater access to gender-inclusive restrooms in campus buildings and more staff mental health counselors to help students. After the two sides hit an impasse in August, they engaged in mediation sessions with a third-party negotiator and then submitted to fact-finding with a neutral panelist.

the writer of this piece is under informed. 

From The Sacramento Bee.

Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article284543095.html#storylink=cpy

Sac State Strike Begins on Monday

CSU Management Walks Out of Bargaining, Systemwide Strike Set for January 22-26 

The CFA Bargaining Team reserved four days for re-opener contract negotiations this week, making every effort to bargain in good faith and explore the space for a negotiated solution before a systemwide strike January 22 to 26. CFA members delivered four proposals Monday (January 8), but were met with disrespect from management today. After 20 minutes, the CSU management bargaining team threatened systemwide layoffs, walked out of bargaining, cancelled all remaining negotiations, then imposed a last, best and final offer on CFA members.

Rather than bargain in good faith with CFA members, CSU management expressed nothing but disdain for faculty. We know they have the money in their flush reserve accounts.

CSU management has never taken seriously our proposals for desperately needed equity transformation for CSU students, faculty, and staff, including raising base salary for our lowest-paid, struggling faculty, manageable workloads for more student engagement, more mental health services for students, limits to police power, and humane and adequate parental leave.

Instead of showing care and concern for the issues faculty have raised repeatedly at the bargaining table since last May, Chancellor Mildred García and her team seem intent on a campaign of insult and intimidation.

Management’s imposition gives us no other option but to continue to move forward with our plan for a systemwide strike in coalition with Teamsters Local 2010 members. The systemwide strike on all 23 campuses over January 22 – January 26 must demonstrate to the Chancellor that she must do right by the faculty, staff, and students of the CSU.

It’s time to get involved and uplift our faculty, staff, and students. Sign up for the January strike dates and join the picket lines! If you have other questions or concerns, please reach out to us at bargainingideas@calfac.org.

Strike FAQs

 

CSU undergrads must take an ethnic studies or social justice class starting in 2023

CSU undergrads must take an ethnic studies or social justice class starting in 2023

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In the first major change to general education across its system in decades, all 430,000 undergraduates attending Cal State universities must take an ethnic studies or social justice course, a requirement approved by CSU trustees Wednesday following a fierce two-day debate that left some longtime social activists in the awkward position of voting “no.”

The requirement will take effect starting in the 2023-24 academic year in the nation’s largest four-year public university system. Five trustees voted against it — including State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and social justice activists Lateefah Simon and Hugo Morales — who said it did not hew closely enough to the definition of ethnic studies. One trustee abstained.

Two questions dominated their debate: What should an ethnic studies requirement include? And who should decide: faculty, trustees or state lawmakers?

“I’m trying to hold with fidelity to what ethnic studies is and has been and what those who framed it and have been fighting for 52 years have asked for,” Thurmond said at the meeting Wednesday, referring to the discipline’s focus on the experience of four oppressed groups in the U.S.: African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos and Indigenous peoples. 

Morales asked to rename the proposal as simply a “social justice” requirement. “This is about social justice, which we have championed,” he said. 

But Chancellor Timothy P. White said that disciplines evolve, and the requirement his office was advancing offers students more choices.

“Ethnic studies has matured,” he said. “It’s deep, it’s powerful, but it’s more than what it used to be.”

The new requirement creates a three-unit, lower-division course requirement “to understand ethnic studies and social justice.” The requirement could be met by a traditional ethnic studies course or by a class focused on social justice or social movements. 

Many were opposed to White’s plan — including educators and activists — and prefer a bill sponsored by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), that more narrowly defines the requirement, limiting it to ethnic studies courses. AB 1460, which passed both the Assembly and Senate, will go back to the Assembly for concurrence next week before being sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. If he signs it, that requirement will supersede the one approved by the CSU Wednesday.

Stand With CFA 2018

Faculty Union at CSU authorizes state wide strike

Faculty Union in California votes to authorize a strike. Would be the first system wide strike in state history.

California State University faculty voted to  approved a measure to give their union leaders the power to authorize a strike next fall that could delay the beginning of school for thousands of students across the 23-campus university system.  The CSU is the 23 campus system of California.  The University of California does not have a faculty union with collective bargaining recognition although some of its staff and employees belong to unions.

A powerful 95% of the  faculty voters agreed that the CSU’s instructional faculty, should initiate rolling walkouts if the CSU administration continues to demand concessions.

Equally as impressive was the turnout, with 70% of CFA members voting to send an unmistakable message to Chancellor Charles B. Reed – state austerity is killing higher education in California.

Lillian Taiz, president of the California Faculty Association, said, “Today, the faculty has spoken loud and clear – we have had enough of the way in which they are being treated by the CSU administration.”

California Faculty Union goes on strike

By Duane Campbell

Thursday, Nov 17, thousands of faculty members made history by participating in the first-ever strike of the California State University system.

The message to the Chancellor was loud and clear from six in the morning until dark: “If you don’t start making decisions based on what is right for the 99% this system serves – instead of the 1% of executives and upper managers running the system -- these actions will continue.”

At CSU Dominguez Hills in Southern California, 2,000 people over the course of the day picketed the ten gates surrounding the campus.

At CSU East Bay in Northern California, according to published reports, 93% of classes were canceled for the day. Traffic was backed up for over a mile and a half into the city of Hayward. At noon, police were forced to cordon off the main entrance on Carlos Bee Blvd, effectively closing campus for the rest of the day.

DSA Honorary Chair Cornel West participated in the support rally. 

“This week, we sent the Chancellor a powerful message,” said CFA President Lillian Taiz, a professor of History at CSU Los Angeles.

Taiz continued, “People are fed up with his ‘management first’ priorities. The CSU community is tired of seeing the Chancellor give huge raises to executives while student fees are hiked, faculty pay is stagnant, class sizes keep growing, and class offerings and faculty jobs are eliminated.

“Huge numbers of people came out to support the faculty this week – students, community members, staff, supporters from other unions, political leaders, and parents.

Join the Day of Action- April 13 at Sac State

Joe Palermo

On April 13, California State University students and faculty are organizing demonstrations at all 23 CSU campuses across the state to protest the latest wave of brutal budget cuts. CSU students, faculty and staff, alumni and their families have a special obligation to make their voices heard in supporting pragmatic solutions to the state's budget woes that have so adversely affected public higher education. We refuse to sit by passively and watch as the public sector of this state -- most notably higher education -- is systematically decimated.

See video in post below. 

California's fiscal crisis, like that of many other state governments, is a product of the Great Wall Street Toxic Waste Dump of 2008. After the bankers' recklessness ignited a financial hydrogen bomb, home values plummeted, life savings and retirements evaporated, jobs vanished, and California's tax revenues dried up by about $20 billion a year. Lower valued homes shrank property taxes and unemployed people cannot pay income taxes. Yet, as in Wisconsin, we're told that the crisis is somehow the fault of teachers, nurses, police officers, firefighters, social workers and other public employees.

The Republican legislative minority in California has killed every good-faith attempt to address realistically the state's fiscal mess. After months of pretending to "negotiate" the "GOP 5," in the name of the minority, conjured up 53 brand new demands before they would agree to allow California's citizens the opportunity to vote on extending existing taxes. This blatant obstructionism came after Governor Jerry Brown and the Democratic majority sought bipartisan support by cutting the state budget by about $13 billion, including another whopping $500 million downgrade in the funding of the CSU system.

CFA, Obama, and Prop.1 A

Labor Leaders support CFA Strike preparation

NATIONAL LABOR LEADERS SPEAK OUT FOR CSU FACULTY


As you have seen reported in the news and as we have been saying for months, faculty in the CSU are making history. We are making history as a higher education union and as an issue around which the larger labor movement has rallied.


On March 21 we announced the stunning results of a system-wide strike vote in which 81% of our members participated and in which 94% voted YES in support of job actions. Now, although we don’t want to strike, if the Chancellor and the Board of Trustees do not come to their senses, we will move forward to historic two day rolling strike actions.


What we are doing is momentous in other ways as well. As many of you know, in recent years the labor unions like SEIU, UNITE HERE and others split from the AFL-CIO to form another umbrella organization, Change to Win.


Today, we are making history because CFA’s struggle with the Chancellor and our fight for quality higher education for the working people of California has become an issue around which all parts of the labor movement have coalesced.


On our website are posted two documents. The first is a letter signed by the presidents of some of the largest and most important unions and academic organizations in the nation NEA, SEIU, CTA and AAUP (click here to view: http://www.calfac.org/allpdf/bargaining/resolutions%20of%20support/Ldrs_Mar07.pdf ).


The second is signed by John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO. All of them indicate that the fight we are involved in is critical to working people all over the country (click here to view: http://www.calfac.org/allpdf/bargaining/resolutions%20of%20support/AFL-CIO_032007.pdf ).


Although we always hope for a settlement, we should move forward toward job actions with the confidence that the nation’s largest labor organizations stand ready to support our fight.


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