If you hear union activists in CFA talking about a “PERB charge,” this refers to something like a grievance the union files against CSU management before the California Public Employment Relations Board, known by its acronym, “PERB.” We also call it an “unfair practice charge,” and this can be – and has been – done in the context of contract bargaining as well as regarding the ongoing practices of CSU management that we feel violate our shared agreements with one another, rooted in state labor law. 

Most recently, on April 28, 2025, CFA filed a PERB charge against CSU management for failing to bargain with us in good faith. Amidst our disagreement on the ground rules for conducting bargaining (we want openness; they fear it), we attended a mediation on April 25, 2025. But rather than coming to mediation in good faith and engaging with the mediator in an effort to move toward an agreement with us, they spent their time writing up a PERB charge against us! Additionally, they have failed to supply us with the information we have requested, which is needed in order to conduct an informed bargaining process. Even after we filed the PERB charge, we made an attempt to reunite with management at the table, and they rebuffed our efforts.

Yet this PERB charge related to bargaining is only the latest in a lengthy string of PERB charges CFA has filed against the CSU administration under Chancellor García. We have seven more active PERB charges pending against the Garcia administration on a wide range of violations. These include:

  • A charge regarding the CSU’s elimination of student vaccination requirements. After we won a favorable decision, CSU management appealed it in September 2024. At a time when the US is experiencing a deadly measles outbreak, it is jaw-dropping that California’s leader of the largest public university system continues to fight us over their elimination of vaccine requirements for students that put faculty and our families at risk of measles and other diseases. Chancellor García is in line with the Trump administration in her egregious negligence of public health, when she should be protecting students and workers in the CSU. On this one, the appeals process is pending in the California courts, as the CSU refuses to accept its initial loss on this vital matter.
  • A charge regarding CSU management’s unilateral closure of the Cal Poly Humboldt campus in the Spring 2024 term, locking faculty out of their offices and suspending campus operations without consultation in response to students protesting for peace in Palestine, as they have done at hundreds of universities across the US and world. Hearing dates are set for the first week of June 2025.
  • A charge regarding CSU management’s imposition of Cal-GETC for all CSU students – not only transfer students as required by law – which is leading to the unnecessary cutting of courses, especially those in the humanities, which are arguably more vital than ever in a country whose democratic institutions are contracting under authoritarianism. In defiance of a statewide Academic Senate resolution opposing the changes, Chancellor García and the Board of Trustees imposed them. The CSU also failed to give CFA proper notice, a meaningful opportunity to meet and confer, and failed to provide information leading to our PERB charge. We are in settlement discussions to ensure that $4 million in allocated funds will be used to pay faculty for additional work and other impacts related to Cal-GETC implementation.
  • A charge regarding the CSU Chancellor’s Directive, the memo that said that the new Time, Place, and Manner (TPM) policy is in effect including for represented employees. We are awaiting a decision from PERB, as the Chancellor’s Office doubles down on antidemocratic moves to limit free speech and academic freedom with changes to TPM policies that leave the CSU community, including faculty, staff, and students with more First Amendment restrictions than we had before Trump (47) took office. As we await a decision from the PERB board, we remain clear on the side of history with which we, the union, are aligned. Despite this PERB charge, we are bargaining over the interim TPM policy and its application to faculty.
  • A charge against CSU management for unilaterally issuing a policy on “Other Conduct of Concern” after a state audit revealed how badly many CSU campuses have bungled sexual harassment complaints, in violation, we allege, of state law. Instead of earnestly addressing the culture that enables sexual harassment, the chancellor took the audit as an opportunity to silence faculty speech and create new ways for faculty to be disciplined. PERB issued a complaint in our favor in April, and we have a hearing date set for August 5-6, 2025.

On a breathtakingly wide range of topics, the pile of PERB charges  under the leadership of Chancellor García is gargantuan.

From insisting on endangering the public health of faculty and CSU communities up and down the state…

To attacking our First Amendment rights through closing down avenues of protest and an entire campus, too(!)…

To creating new ways to discipline us to cover up their own mismanagement of workplace harassment…

To  slashing our general education curriculum to the bone (via Cal-GETC), while replacing our labor with A.I. bots…

To refusing to bargain with us in an open, informed, democratic, transparent way…

The CSU is totally out of step not only with our goals as CFA to make the CSU stop shortchanging students, and to align itself with our way forward, but also with California state labor law! We thus continue to organize, educate, and litigate in order to build a more just CSU.

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