Understanding Our Bargaining Proposal on Appointments

If you missed last week’s bargaining recap on salary, please click here to review what our CFA Bargaining Team has negotiated at the table. 

This week, we want to break down our ten proposals on appointment. This is a substantial set of proposals that impact faculty on temporary contracts, especially lecturers. It also strives to improve counselor tenure density and the range elevation process. 

Please note that these proposals may change as we continue bargaining at the table with management. 

WHAT WE PROPOSED 

1. Minimum Notice for Letters of Appointment 

We proposed that official notice for appointments must be given at least four weeks prior to the start of the appointment.  

2. Counselor Appointments 

We proposed that counselor appointments require a recommendation to the president from the campus’ counselor committee—which is elected by counselor faculty. 

3. Equal Pay Across Multiple Departments 

We proposed that any faculty classified as “temporary” by the CSU, with appointments in multiple departments, should be assigned the same base salary and range for all departments, and that should reflect their highest base pay appointment.  

4. Shorter Timeline to Three-Year Appointment 

Faculty on temporary appointments currently require six consecutive years of service before they are offered a three-year appointment. We are proposing that we reduce that requirement to only four years of consecutive service before they reach their three-year contract. 

As a side note, a consecutive year of service only requires that a faculty member teaches one semester during that academic year. 

5. Three-Year Appointment Entitlement 

Under the current contract, subsequent three-year entitlements are determined by the time-base held during the last year of the prior three-year appointment. 

While this isn’t necessarily bad, faculty often find their time-base diminished in the last year of their contract for any number of reasons. 

We are proposing that subsequent three-year and possibly longer term appointments should reflect the highest time base taught during the course of the prior appointment. 

6. Clinical Professor, Clinical Faculty, and Teaching Professor Appointments

The CFA Bargaining Team was intrigued by a position that management proposed called “Clinical Professor,” whose primary assignment would consist of clinical instruction, supervision of internships, labs, or field-based professional training settings.

The team felt it would be necessary to expand the category to also include Clinical Faculty (whose primary assignment consists of psychological counseling) and Teaching Professor (whose primary assignment consists of teaching).

All three of these appointments would be full-time positions.

A Teaching Professor appointment helps provide a pathway to an ongoing appointment for lecturer faculty and allows applicants to be hired directly into that role. They are generally not expected to perform research and are not evaluated on their research productivity.

Moreover, if a faculty member on a temporary appointment completes at least six years of service in a three-year or five-year appointment with at least 0.8 time-base during the prior three academic years, they must be converted to a full-time continuing appointment at the beginning of the next academic year.

7. Easier Path to Reclassification 

We have also proposed stronger language to create a more accessible pathway for faculty on temporary contracts to transition into tenure-track positions. 

Instead of requiring an external offer of tenure-track employment, a colleague’s departmental peer review committee would now be able to review and recommend them for a tenure-track position. 

8. Change in Order of Assignment 

We are proposing substantial changes to the order of assignment to strengthen seniority rights and the process by which a faculty on a temporary appointment can become full-time. We will map out these changes in the next piece of our bargaining series. 

9. Improving Range Elevation 

We proposed that range elevation procedures shall also apply to counselors on temporary appointments who are eligible for reclassification. 

Range elevation and reclassification will trigger under three conditions: 

1. When faculty on temporary appointments are evaluated for their initial three-year appointment 

2. When faculty on temporary appointments are evaluated for their status as a long-term faculty 

3. When it has been at least 5 years since their most recent range elevation. 

This new range elevation eligibility would do away with the need to have at least six years of full-time adjusted service and it would streamline the process, making it easier for faculty to be eligible for range elevation and making that eligibility come more quickly.  

10. Counselor Tenure Density 

Finally, we proposed that each campus must have a minimum of 50% of its counselor faculty be appointed into either tenured or probationary appointments. 

REJECTIONS ABOUND: WHAT MANAGEMENT COUNTER-PROPOSED! 

The CSU bargaining team rejected nearly every CFA proposal listed above and included nonsensical modifications to a few of them. 

While rejecting our proposal for a long-term faculty position, they instead proposed a five-year appointment for lecturer faculty that requires approval by the appropriate administrator and a questionable and subjective “exceptional” evaluation. This would mean that deans could gift a special five-year appointment to their favorite few, while denying it for the vast majority of lecturer faculty. 

Management also changed the order of work assignment to include a “scholar/artist in residence,” which would replace the visiting faculty classification. Campus administrators would be in a position to renew, extend, or repeat this scholar’s appointment for as long as they wanted without any input from faculty. They would also receive work ahead of most lecturers in the order of assignment. 

Lastly, management wants to exclude retired annuitants (i.e., faculty who have officially retired but wish to return on a limited basis) from academic year entitlement rights. 

Besides these modifications and counterproposals, the CSU bargaining team has rejected every CFA proposal, and their counterproposals do little to address the precarity that so many of our faculty face. 

Our proposals have the power to improve the stability and working conditions of our faculty, and we will not let management undermine the real transformation we help create on our campuses and in our students’ lives. 

In the next part of our series, we will continue our discussion on appointment by breaking down our proposal for preference of work and order of assignment.  

Please stay tuned and connect with your chapter as we strategize ways to fight for what we deserve!