Negotiations last week between CFA and the Chancellor affect not only how well we will be able to support our own families, but also what kind of education we can deliver to our students. How the issues coming up at the bargaining table play out in the final contract will affect the future of our profession and the university and have national implications.

THE CHANCELLOR'S SALARY DEMANDS: Nothing Now, Less Later

The Chancellor’s salary proposals are:

• No salary increases whatsoever in 2011/12
• Reopeners that would allow the Chancellor to demand reductions to faculty salaries AND benefits in 2012/13 and 2013/14
• No change in any of the take-back proposals that have been on the table for months

Since summer 2008, the Chancellor has refused to implement any part of the salary increases anticipated in the last contract—no General Salary Increases (GSIs), no Service Salary Increases (SSIs), and no Equity Adjustments.

On top of that, we took a 10% furlough in 2009/10. Under the Chancellor’s proposal, which includes the possibility of pay and benefits cuts in 2012/13 and 2013/14, almost all of us could suffer a net decrease in salaries during the six years between 2008 and 2014.

Along with the possibility of earning even less, the Chancellor's contract proposals could leave the faculty paying even more for health care, retirement, and possibly other benefits, or seeing the level of benefits reduced.

The Chancellor also wants to eliminate PPIs and guaranteed equity raises from the contract. Individual equity or market raises, if any, would be unfunded and entirely at the discretion of campus presidents on a case by case basis.

CFA'S SALARY PROPOSALS

By contrast, CFA seeks a fair and equitable contract that recognizes faculty needs while taking into account the current financial position of the CSU.

CFA’s salary proposals include:

• Address long-standing salary inequities for Associate and Full Professors by implementing Year 2 of the previously negotiated equity program
• Pay faculty a modest 1% General Salary Increase (GSI) in 2011/12, 2012/13, and 2013/14
• Increase the GSI to 5% in the first year in which the CSU’s operating budget grows to what it should have been in 2008/09, when faculty would have received a 5% GSI. In 2008/09, CSU faculty would have received a 5% raise if the CSU operating budget had reached $4.79 billion. As we all know, it did not, and the Chancellor refused to renegotiate the raises that were expected. Despite state funding cuts, the CSU’s gross budget allocation for 2011/12 is up to $4.58 billion. If and when the $4.79 billion figure is reached, it seems only fair that faculty should get at least part of the increases previously negotiated.
• Pay service salary increases each year. Treat faculty like all other state employees. Pay eligible faculty on the salary ladder who have performed satisfactorily a Service Salary Increase (SSI) of 2.65% in each of 2011/12, 2012/13, and 2013/14. Other state agencies automatically provide step increases and have done so throughout the budget crisis years. In fact, in other agencies, unions do not even bargain over these steps. This is true even in state agencies where unions were forced to accept financial and other take backs. They understand that the salary ladder is cost neutral over time as higher paid employees leave at or near the top and lower paid employees enter at or near the bottom. Only the Chancellor seems unable to grasp that.

Notwithstanding our challenges, CFA’s proposal is based on the vision that we have an obligation to do all we can to preserve the CSU as a place where students receive high quality education. That education must be provided by people:

• Who have the resources and job security to maintain high professional standards;
• Who have the ability and responsibility to influence, through shared governance, the content of their academic program and the teaching loads they are required to carry; and
• Who are not required to teach in increasingly overcrowded conditions that make learning and teaching increasingly frustrating and, at times, impossible.

In contrast, the Chancellor’s bargaining proposals will lead us toward a very different vision of the university and faculty’s role in it. It is a vision that we do not believe the faculty are willing to accept.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Bargaining victories are won not at the bargaining table but on the campuses and in the communities. It will take the full participation of all faculty—including you—to win a fair contract.

You will be invited to meetings and activities on every campus in the coming weeks. CFA needs everyone’s participation and creativity. The time for action is now.