Bargaining Update: Work on Proposals Continue as We Try to Return to the Table

The CFA Bargaining Team met last week and are reconvening this week at CFA Headquarters in Sacramento.

Our team includes representation from all 23 campuses and we have almost all classifications in the unit represented, including lecturers, tenure-line professors, counselors, and librarians. We are still hoping to include a coach.

We encourage members to connect with their chapters’ efforts to support their colleagues and our bargaining efforts.

We are working up a comprehensive package of proposals centered around anti-racism and social justice that would improve the working conditions of faculty in the areas of parental leave, lecturer job security, fair evaluation processes, workload, health and safety, salary, and benefits. We plan to propose standalone articles to address artificial intelligence and academic freedom. 

“The bargaining team has been hard at work for the last nine months, building our strategy and developing proposals,” said Kevin Wehr, CFA Bargaining Team Chair and Sacramento State professor. “Our ideas are based on last year’s bargaining survey, on campus-based bargaining meetings with faculty over the last year, and on our collective need to meet the current moment. We are eager to get to the table and begin negotiations in earnest.”

The Public Employees Relations Board is still reviewing the unfair labor practice charge we filed in April against CSU management for refusing to bargain in good faith. The charge alleges a number of violations of the Higher Education Employer Employee Relations Act (HEERA). We aren’t resuming bargaining with management until we resolve our dispute around ground rules, and for now management remains unreasonable.

Management wants to limit CFA members to a number that doesn’t accommodate big table bargaining or the full bargaining team, which includes representation from all 23 campuses. Big table bargaining allows for broad participation by members in the bargaining process, and we proposed allowing non-bargaining team members to attend meetings via Zoom as we did in our most recent bargaining campaign in 2022-23.

We hope to come to an agreement and get back to the table soon over issues that matter, including pay and working conditions.

Our Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) was originally set to expire on June 30, but we signed short extensions through September 1 and then through October 31, 2025. 

The extensions do not extend provisions of the contract that have specific end dates. This includes expanded range elevation under the full-time adjusted service years eligibility criteria. It is imperative that CSU management come back to the table to bargain.

We will evaluate a further extension as October 31 approaches. Typically, the two sides approve a short-term extension when we are in the process of negotiating a new contract.

Once the Bargaining Team gets back to the table, we will provide more consistent and regular updates. You can check for future updates in the CFA Headlines newsletter or on our bargaining website, cfabargaining.org.

Please let us know if you have bargaining ideas by emailing bargainingideas@calfac.org. You can also reach out to your campus representative on the Bargaining Team. Representatives and their campuses are listed here.