The union representing California State University faculty has ratified a new bargaining contract with the 23-campus system that gives raises to professors, coaches, counselors, librarians and other eligible faculty.
The California Faculty Association announced the results of the union vote on Thursday, Feb. 3.
The agreement will cover 29,000 faculty across the system and includes a one-time bonus for their work during the pandemic, efforts to award faculty who assist and mentor the CSU’s diverse student body and efforts to study more ways to support working parents, a California Faculty Association statement said Thursday.
CFA President Charles Toombs, a professor at San Diego State University, said the union had its highest voter turnout in a decade and that 95% of those who voted supported the new contract. He declined, however, to say how many people voted at a press conference held via Zoom on Thursday morning.
“They turned out and showed up to let the CSU administration know that this contract matters,” Toombs said of faculty who voted.
The CSU Board of Trustees approved the contract at a meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 25, and now that the CFA has ratified the contract, it will go into effect, CSU spokeswoman Toni Molle said Thursday. The new agreement will run through June 30, 2024.
The CSU is the largest public university system in the nation, with more than 485,000 students and campuses in nearly every part of the state, including Fullerton, Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The CSU’s four-largest campuses, based on enrollment, are all in Southern California, according to 2020 data: Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Northridge and San Diego State University.
“This new collective bargaining agreement with CFA acknowledges the efforts undertaken by our faculty to ensure that students continued to progress toward a degree throughout the COVID pandemic,” said CSU spokesman Mike Uhlenkamp. “It provides appropriate compensation for current and future years and will also lead to increased collaboration in Sacramento as we advocate together for appropriate funding in the 2022-23 budget.
“Most importantly,” he added, “the successor contract will allow us all to continue the efforts underway across all 23 campuses to provide a transformative education to the nearly half-a-million CSU students.”
The tentative contract, according to the CSU and CFA, includes:
- A one-time payment of $3,500, prorated by each faculty member’s 2020-21 time base to recognize work during the coronavirus pandemic.
- A 4% salary increase for all faculty, retroactive to July 1.
- Another salary increase, up to 4%, effective next fiscal year, depending on the state budget allocation to the CSU.
- A 2.65% service salary increase during fiscal years 2021-22 and 2023-24 for all eligible faculty, including coaches, counselors and librarians.
- A 2.65% post-promotion increase during fiscal year 2022-23 for eligible faculty, including coaches, counselors and librarians.
The agreement also allows librarians and counselors more opportunities to work remotely and better opportunities for tenure-track employment for lecturers. It will also allow faculty to address and rebut bias in student evaluations of them, a CFA statement said, and it will create a group to consider how to better address parental leave.
It will also better recognize faculty who assist and mentor the diverse student body of the CSU by increasing the number of Exceptional Service Awards, the CFA said. Across the CSU, 45% of students are Hispanic or Latino, according to the most-recent data; 22% are White and 16% are Asian.
And since there is a lack of diverse faculty on CSU campuses, according to the CFA, those faculty often serve on various committees and work groups. Nearly 60% of instructional faculty are White and about 55% of non-instructional facility are White, according to 2020 CSU data.
The agreement also protects the safety of caste-oppressed students, faculty and staff. In January, the CSU added caste to its system-wide policy against discrimination.
“While we understand that the anti-racism social justice transformation we strive for cannot be accomplished solely through bargaining,” Sharon Elise, a CSU San Marcos professor and an associate vice president of the CFA’s council on Racial & Social Justice, said, “this new contract moves us further in our struggles to relieve the cultural taxation burden of faculty and to firmly support faculty who face bias, including that based on caste.”