On Saturday January 20th, the California Faculty Association American labor union (CFA) announced their strike on the California State University management.
The CFA board of directors demanded a strike against CSU management because the faculty members need higher compensation, improved working conditions, and improved safety conditions. The CFA represents all 29,000 CSU professors, lecturers, counselors, and other faculty members. As we learned in class, it is a union's responsibility to protect their workers and to demand policies that will allow the members of the union to have better pay and working conditions.
While there has been an increase in media coverage on the 5 day strike currently, since December of 2023 individual CSU’s such as Cal Poly Pomona, San Francisco State, Los Angeles State, and Sacramento state have held walkouts for these demands.
Two of CFA’s demands are the 12% general salary raise for all faculty, and a minimum salary raise for full time faculty from the current $54,360 to $64,360. The 12% raise would be for all 29,000 employees that the CFA represents. It’s understandable why they are asking for such a raise, the cost of living in California for non-family households is roughly $60,000 according to the United States Census report for California in 2022. However, while the faculty needs a massive raise, CSU management is concerned they cannot meet their demands.
CSU management had agreed to raise CSU tuition by 6% for five years in 2023 in order to balance their budget. They claim that a large portion is already spent on the staff's compensation. Their concern is that accepting the union's wishes will cause program cuts and/or layoffs.
On January 22nd of 2024, the 5 day strike began. Classes were canceled, staff and students on all 23 campuses participated. On January 23rd, the strike ended when the CFA and CSU management announced they came to a tentative agreement.
The agreement states that the union will grant the faculty a 5% grant raise, the lowest paid faculty will receive a $3,000 raise, and a third of faculty got 2.65% raise. Other important aspects of the tentative agreement were parental paid leave extended from 6 to 10 weeks, and an increase in establishing gender-inclusive restrooms.
To bring this back to our classroom, the CFA is doing their duty as a union to advocate for their workers' betterment. The CFA and CSU participated in a collective bargaining to reach the tentative agreement, and that has resulted in changes on behalf of the CFA. However, despite the success that the CFA achieved, in comparison to the demands they requested, there is still a large difference between what the faculty members need.
Cited Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/22/us/csu-california-faculty-strike.html
https://www.calfac.org/tentative-agreement-reached-ending-cfa-members-historic-systemwide-strike/
https://www.csus.edu/news/strike-info/_internal/_documents/faq-general-update.pdf
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/01/24/uwgw-j24.html
https://data.census.gov/profile/California?g=040XX00US06#income-and-poverty
8 comments:
This definitely seems like a tough situation for both parties. Professors/staff are obviously crucial to keeping these colleges functioning, and this strike demonstrates that. There is no doubt that they deserve to be fairly compensated, at least above cost of living. However the implications of giving raises to all 29,000 faculty members would also create significant change. One change that this post mentioned was making layoffs in order to compensate for the budget costs. However, this might lead to the college being understaffed, and the professors that remain may get underpaid for the extra work they would have to take on. Another solution is to raise tuition, which is also not ideal, especially as the CSUs are state schools. I’m sure that many students in California rely on going to state schools because of the lower cost. It would be devastating to see increases in tuition on schools that are meant to be on the more affordable side for many students.
I agree with Mia. In addition, it continues to be a wonder to me why the mere idea of a strike is even being thought about, much less that it’s actually happening. I simply don't understand why the US government, and many other private education institutions, place so little value in the teaching profession. It’s clear that the places where the government spends more money are the places they care more about. So why are so many teachers barely living above the poverty line? Do we not value education?? I know the idea that being a teacher just doesn’t warrant the income that other “more important jobs” do has been around for a while, but I don’t know where it started and why it has continued to be an issue for so long. Of course I recognize that it’s not as simple as signing a law into existence that increases the amount of money from the government flowing into public schools. BUT on the other hand, any competent individual knows that public education (from elementary school through high school and beyond) is the basis of American intelligence, in simple terms. Who are we to strip teachers of a fair income? They are the reason we all have our jobs, and our society COULD NOT function without them. I think the question right now is not “should the government pay teachers more?” but rather “how can the government effectively implement this policy so that no terrible damage is done to our economy?” We may have to shift our economic priorities around, and we may have to sacrifice a little money in other places (like the military), and it may take years of work, but we will come out of it with a genuine, positive impact on every single faculty member.
The outcome of this 5-day strike seems unsatisfying for CFA union. While they did end up with an overall increase in salary and a few small victories like longer parental paid leave and more gender-neutral restrooms, they achieved less than half of what they attempted to negotiate more. Significantly, the $3000 raise for the lowest paid faculty doesn't even bring their income up to match the cost of living in California ($57360 vs $60000). And now that the CFA and CSU have come to an agreement, it is far less likely that another strike will take place or any progress will be made in terms of paying teachers more livable wages within the CSU system.
It's upsetting that teachers and faculty have to even go on such an elongated strike to get their message ahead-- shouldn't the fact that professors are barely living above the poverty line, with a now salary of around $57k, be enough evidence that the government must do more to prioritize education. Teachers and schooling are the baseline/ foundation for society, and without education--we as a society would be nothing. What does it take for the government to re-evaluate their priorities? What does it take for them to understand what is at stake for future generations? Connecting to what Mia said, I also agree that students often rely on CSU's because they are more accessible, and with tuition slowly going up it would be unfair to crush one's academic dreams and aspirations because money is their biggest obstacle.
The CSU system as a whole has consistently mismanaged its funds (hiring unnecessary administrators, increasing administrator pay, infrastructure projects that ended up making parking more expensive, and more. On top of that, the CSU system is passing off costs to its students with a crazy price hike. Newsom's administration needs to reign in the CSU chancellor's office and promote greater regulatory oversight over the CSU system as a whole. As it stands, the CSU system is failing its only goal (educating Californians relatively cheaply).
I always find it frustrating to see staff and faculty practically have to beg to get paid a reasonable amount, especially considering how much money each student must pay to attend a CSU. I also agree with other peoples comments that it is sad to see that this 5 day strike basically only got them half of what they actually asked for. Living in California is expensive, and seeing the faculty have to beg to get paid reasonably while the schools spend money in ways that are less necessary, is just upsetting to see.
According to fiscaldata.treasury.gov, a government website created by the Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service to consolidate federal financial data, only 3% of the US federal budget is spent on education, training, employment, and social services (excluding social security). Perhaps this is more of a liberal take, but it seems ludicrous that education, the thing that sets up the very future of the nation and that America is constantly globally ridiculed for, is only worth 3% of America's budget. Just recently we had a strike in the UC system as well, and especially with California's high living cost it's clear that a larger portion of the US budget should go towards funding education. As the average cost of living shoots upwards but median family income crawls, this trend seems to point to either a necessity for more educational spending, or perhaps a need to fix a greater root issue in the American economy.
Link to Fiscal Data
This will not be the last time teachers and workers in the educational department go on strike. I remember in middle school when my teachers went on strike for a few days because of the low salary. Unfortunately, we have gotten to the point where teachers are so under-appreciated and unvalued that they have to resort to striking. I do not understand how we can value education so much yet undermine the people providing us with said education. I’m glad they could get something out of this strike (a 5% raise), but there is definitely more room for improvement. In this economy, with rising prices and the fact that we live in California, it will not be enough for those to support themselves and their families. I hope that with time and changes, the working conditions for these professors will be satisfactory.
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