The faculty union for the California State University plans to hold one-day strikes at four campuses in early December, significantly ratcheting up their pressure on the nation’s largest four-year public university to secure 12% raises and other key concessions.
The planned dates and campuses are:
Dec. 4, Cal Poly Pomona
Dec. 5, San Francisco State
Dec. 6, CSU Los Angeles
Dec. 7, Sacramento State
Those schools, which enroll around 110,000 students combined, are among the largest of the 23-campus system that educates nearly 460,000 undergraduates and graduate students. The timing is also significant as the one-day strikes fall about a week before the final exam period when students are cramming and in a high state of anxiety over their grades. The union maintains that it has the support of many students.
The strikes are conditional: If the Cal State leadership meets the union’s demands, the union will call off the walkouts. The dates could also change if a legal process to find a resolution between the union and university doesn’t come to a close by early December.
The two sides are in a period of labor law called fact-finding in which a neutral labor specialist writes a report summarizing the disputes and recommendations to settle the dispute.
The union cannot legally strike before that process ends.The union, called the California Faculty Association, is also threatening to stage more strikes during the spring term, which begins in late January of next year. The union represents about 29,000 workers. Never in its history has it held systemwide strikes.
Union leadership prepared a website answering key questions about the planned December strikes.“It is important to tell students the dates of the strike and to explain why you are going on strike,” the website says. “Many faculty members may also want to invite students to join them on the picket line. If this is your choice, you must emphasize to students that joining the picket line is entirely voluntary.”The faculty union has been signaling that it’s prepared to strike since at least May. Last month 95% of its members who voted approved a strike resolution, giving leadership the power to call a strike if it deems it necessary.
The union wants the Cal State system to provide a 12% wage hike this year for all faculty to keep up with inflation, lift the minimum wages for the lowest-paid instructors, expand parental leave, provide lactation rooms for new parents, add more unionized mental health professionals for students, and more. Cal State has argued it cannot afford the wage increases, most recently countering with 15% wage hikes across three years, including a 5% bump this year.Cal State has argued that its total costs far exceed how much it brings in from tuition and state taxpayer revenue — even after approving multiple years of tuition hikes that will take effect next year.
The faculty union counters that the university builds annual surpluses that it could use toward raises but instead pours into reserves. Last month the union produced an accounting analysis that it says shows that Cal State has more in reserves that it can use for wage increases. The union vehemently opposed the tuition hikes, endearing itself to students.
About 60% of undergraduates don’t pay tuition because of state and campus financial aid.A smaller union with around 1,100 maintenance and electrical workers plans to strike next week, affecting 22 campuses.Meanwhile, several other unions that battled with Cal State in recent months agreed to tentative contracts in the past few weeks, likely helping to avert a full strike of 60,000 workers.
In other labor news: Workers at a Stanislaus County tomato farm and packing company became the first to unionize under a new California law making it easier for farmworkers to organize, reports Nicole Foy of CalMatters’ California Divide team.The United Farm Workers said Thursday that the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board certified the election petition after 51% of 297 workers at DMB Packing voted for union representation, said Santiago Avila-Gomez, the board’s executive secretary.
The workers organized under new rules enacted this year by a controversial new California law which allows farmworkers to vote for union representation by signing union authorization cards, called card check.
They’ll be part of UFW, which represents nearly 7,000 agricultural workers at 20 California companies. Read more about the new law in Nicole’s story.
And in even more labor news: The state scientists’ union told members Thursday it plans a walkout next week, the Sacramento Bee reports.The California Association of Professional Scientists plans a rolling three-day strike Nov. 15-17, in what would be a first for state civil servants.
