EDITORIAL - On November 7th, 2023, 95% of California Faculty Association (CFA) workers voted to approve a series of limited, one-day strikes at Cal Poly Pomona, San Francisco State, CSU Los Angeles, and Sacramento State on December 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th, respectively. The successful strike vote followed a breakdown of negotiations between the CSU and CFA during a routine contract reopener, which began in the Spring of 2023. The CFA declared an impasse in negotiations on August 9th.
CFA workers are demanding a general salary increase of 12% for all faculty, coaches, and counselors, a raise of the salary floor for the lowest-paid lecturers and temporary faculty, expanded parental leave benefits, guaranteed employee access to gender-inclusive bathrooms and lactation rooms, and protections for faculty interactions with campus police. Additionally, the CFA is asking for workload reductions for faculty by implementing course caps limiting the number of students allowed in each class.
On top of their visible teaching workload, tenure-track CSU professors are expected to be active and productive researchers in their field of study, participate in faculty governance through oversight and hiring committees, evaluate their peer’s research, create new policies for the university, and advise undergraduate and graduate student projects. Additionally, many CSU professors are not given teaching assistants to help with grading work, which can quickly become overwhelming, especially with uncapped class sizes. Tenure track professors generally teach four-semester classes on top of their additional workloads.
Currently, CSU faculty are only guaranteed 30 days or six weeks of parental leave. UC employees enjoy an entire semester of paid parental leave, which benefits the university system as a whole by eliminating disruptions to semester-long classes. The current CSU policy means that classes are disrupted while professors are out on mid-semester parental leave, a problem that the UC system has already solved with its parental leave policy.
Leora Freedman, the Vice Chancellor for Human Resources at the CSU, sent a message to CSU students on October 30th claiming that “the CSU has reached tentative agreements with five of its employee unions, and the CSU remains hopeful that an agreement with CFA will be reached” additionally claiming that the CSU “continue[s] to bargain in good faith with Teamsters.” Just two weeks after Freedman’s message, Teamsters Local 2010, the union representing skilled trade employees across the CSU, announced a sellout CSU-wide one-day strike on November 14th.
Dr. Julia Shatz, an assistant history professor at Fresno State University, agrees with the CFA’s demands: “What CFA is asking for is standard at UC campuses and many other universities as it is the most logical way to cover faculty absences with minimal disruption to students and scheduling.”
The CSU has adopted propagandistic rhetoric to paint the striking CSU faculty as selfish for abandoning their students in the last week of class. No strike would be necessary if the CSU were willing to meet the CFA’s reasonable demands. Dr. Shatz has taken it upon herself to educate her students on the CFA’s demands and the reasons behind the strike. In her classes, she emphasizes that the strike is a struggle between workers and employers, not faculty against students. As often repeated by CFA members, faculty working conditions are student learning conditions.
Like most professors, Dr. Shatz views the struggle for better working conditions to be a struggle for the health of the CSU system as a whole: “If our workloads are too heavy, if we are stressed out about affording housing and childcare, if we can’t get you into see a counselor when you need it, then your education suffers. We are fighting to be fairly treated and compensated for our labor, but we are also fighting for the future of CSU and the future of public higher education more broadly. We want a more equitable and sustainable CSU for all of us.”
The CSU countered the CFA’s demands with a 5% raise, a rate that does not match inflation over the course of the previous contract. The CSU is unwilling to meet the 12% raise or any of the additional demands claiming that it cannot afford to accommodate all of the CFA’s asks. Yet, just two months ago, CSU announced a tuition increase of six percent per year distributed over the next five years, totaling a 34% increase in student tuition in 2028. The CSU expects to increase revenue by $148 million in the first year of the tuition increase.
Students and faculty should be wary of the tuition increases given the CSU’s historic corruption and cronyism. In 2020, former CSU chancellor Joseph Castro awarded a generous $260,000 settlement package, including a “promise of a glowing letter of recommendation” to former Fresno State President Frank Lamas in exchange for Lamas’ resignation after the university received twelve complaints of sexual harassment involving Lamas over six years. Throughout the duration of Lamas’ sexual harassment, Castro “consistently did not take any significant action against but instead supported Lamas throughout his employment even in the face of multiple allegations, growing evidence, and ultimately, confirmed findings of Lamas’ alleged misconduct.” Castro allegedly “persuaded” Lamas to attend sexual harassment training in 2016, and opted to install windows in Lamas’ office rather than reprimand him for his constant sexual harassment of CSU staff and students.
Partially in response to Castro and Lamas’ actions, the CSU now spends nearly $40 million annually across 263 employees to change how the system tracks and reports Title IX complaints.
The struggle between the CFA faculty and the CSU highlights an important misconception on behalf of the CSU administration, which runs the CSU as if it were a business designed for profit rather than a public institution acting for the betterment of society. This misconception follows a greater trend in American politics to view public institutions as businesses that must make a profit. In recent years, Louis DeJoy, the Trump-appointed Postmaster General, has run the United States Postal Service (USPS) as a private business, cutting wages, installing punitive surveillance systems, and “consolidating” their delivery network, resulting in tens of thousands of planned layoffs. The plight of CSU faculty and USPS workers is intrinsically the same: workers must band together to fight for what is rightfully theirs against the tide of American fascism.
CSU faculty, students, and members of the collegiate community must fight against the CSU’s pitiful counters to the CFA’s demands. Students can support the CSU faculty’s efforts by joining their local Students for a Quality Education chapter. Students are also encouraged to join in on rallies or strike actions to show their support for CFA workers. CSU faculty are not striking out of greed or because they dislike their students. They are asking for their basic needs to be met, which the CSU is unwilling to provide.
In the words of Dr. Shatz, “The most important thing that students can do to support their faculty is talk to their peers and people in their lives about what’s going on, what faculty are bargaining for, and why it matters for students. Suppose there are strikes or even talks about strikes. In that case, the administration may try to paint it as a faculty versus student battle - as faculty neglect their duties to their students or do not care about their students' impacts. This isn’t the case at all! We are in classrooms and offices and labs with you all every day because we care so deeply about you as individuals and about the kind of education that you’re getting.”
Isla Dudley is a Fresno State graduating history student from Hanford, California. She aims to return for her master's degree in the Fall of 2024.
