Barring a last minute settlement, faculty across the California State University system will begin an unprecedented week-long labor strike Monday, possibly causing widespread disruption for students statewide, including the 53,000 who attend San Diego State University and Cal State San Marcos.
CSU says it will try to operate as normally as possible. But its 23 campuses could collectively experience thousands of class cancellations amid picketing, just as the nation’s largest four-year public university system begins the spring semester.
Many faculty say they are furious that CSU trustees recently gave them a 5 percent pay raise instead of the 12 percent increase that was being sought by the 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches that make up the California Faculty Association (CFA).
“We’ve gotten a really positive response from faculty members about canceling classes,” said Michelle Ramos Pellicia, a modern language studies professor at Cal State San Marcos.
“I heard administrators say it is a minority of us, but that is not what I gathered from talking to people.”
The uproar comes at a pivotal moment. Countless students are going through the stressful process of deciding which classes they wish to add or drop. And SDSU and Cal State San Marcos are dealing with record growth, which creates pressure for ever-more classes.
On Saturday, some of the 3,500 CFA members at SDSU and Cal State San Marcos were busy drafting final plans to operate picket lines on campus beginning early Monday morning, about the time that a significant storm is expected to hit the county.
Some faculty say CSU trustees overstated the depth of the system’s money problems as a means of denying them higher raises.
Last spring, trustees announced that the system faced a $1.5 billion budget gap that necessitated bold action. Months later, trustees voted to increase annual tuition by 6 percent for five consecutive years. Collectively, that amounts to a tuition hike of more than 30 percent.
During this period, the CFA had a forensic accountant from Eastern Michigan University review the CSU’s finances. That led to a report that says, in part, “The CSU system is in a very strong financial condition. This conclusion is supported by a high level of reserves, and annual operating cash flow surpluses.”
The interest earned on that money “is more than enough to pay for our salary proposals,” said Charles Toombs, a SDSU Africana Studies professor and CFA organizer.
“And much of that would lift the salary floor for the lowest-paid lecturers. The CSU would would still have plenty of money in reserve for a crisis or rainy day needs.”
At SDSU and many other campuses, lecturers teach more than half of all classes.
Faculty also are pressuring the CSU to provide for better parental leave programs, the hiring of larger numbers of counselors, broader mental health services for students, and more lactation spaces, as well as gender-inclusive bathrooms.
But better salaries are the heart of the matter.
“People are feeling squeezed out by the cost of living,” said Kate Hovloet, a scholarly communication librarian at SDSU. “It’s food, it’s housing, it’s all of these other things.”
The CSU system tried to allay student fears this week, saying in a statement, “All CSU campuses will remain open during a strike to service students and have contingency plans in place to maintain university operations. Our hope is to minimize any disruptions and that the strike poses no hardship on our students.”
Cal State San Marcos and SDSU emphasized an additional point, saying that the job action will not hurt a student’s ability to complete their courses and graduate on time in the spring.
There also was a bit of good news on Friday night. The CSU and Teamsters Local 2010 reached a tentative agreement on a three year contract covering 1,100 skilled trade workers spread across all but one of the system’s 23 campuses. The Teamsters had been planning to go on strike, and might have meshed their efforts with faculty.
