Fall 2019 Welcome Message from
CFA Chapter President

On behalf of your local chapter leadership of the California Faculty Association, welcome back to the start of our fall semester and welcome to all the new tenure track and lecturer faculty joining us this year! Below you will find some important updates from the summer as well as things you can look forward to in the coming semester from your chapter CFA leadership team!  

Salary Increases 
We are still reaping the benefits of the hard work we did together on our last contract and the extension! All faculty received a 2.5% increase to our salaries on July 1st and should have seen that increase in our August 1st paychecks! This increase was on top of the 3.5% increase we saw last November and the 10.5% in increases we negotiated after we waged our historic “Fight for Five” campaign back in 2015.  

Given the number of new hires we’ve had in the past several years, many of you may not have been here during our Fight for Five campaign, but those who were here know the commitment and collective action that it took for us to secure the salary increases (and other contract gains) we’ve seen these last few years. This 2.5% increase was the last under our current contract. Our contract extension goes until June 2020. We will need to be ready to support our bargaining team once again and we will need all our faculty to join our collective push for another fair contract going forward.  

Contract Negotiations & Bargaining Survey
To that end, this semester we will be distributing a statewide bargaining survey to our CFA members. This is your chance to weigh in early on in the process about your priorities for our next contract. You’ll be receiving lots of reminders to fill out the survey once it is available.  

I hope that you will join with thousands of your faculty colleagues across the CSU and become a member of CFA so that you too can have your voice heard in our bargaining survey. Our union is only as strong as our least involved faculty member, and our ability to secure fair contracts and protect faculty rights comes from all of us doing the work of the common good as CFA.  

If you are not yet a member, you can join today at:

https://www.calfac.org/join-cfa

CFA Legislative Efforts Pay Off
Thanks in large measure to the efforts of CFA activists working alongside our student activists we saw an unprecedented increase in the final budget signed by Governor Newsom over the summer. CFA has been cultivating a positive working relationship with Governor Newsom through the years, especially during his time on the CSU Board of Trustees as Lieutenant Governor. This past lobby days, Governor Gavin Newsom stopped by our CFA Headquarters and gave an impromptu speech that gives witness to the impact of our efforts. You can watch his remarks here:   


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNG2EKRO9t0
      
On-going Legislative Efforts
In addition to securing more funds for the CSU, several of your CFA colleagues attended a recent rally at the state capital on the importance of ethnic studies to public education. CFA is co-sponsoring AB 1460 that would require the CSU to provide courses in ethnic studies at each of its 23 campuses and require students to complete one ethnic studies course to graduate. We recognize the value of and the empowerment that comes from students learning the histories, cultures, and intellectual traditions/contributions of Native peoples and communities of color, along with the importance of deepening our students’ understanding of the intersections of race, gender, class, and other aspects of our social location when it comes to analyzing power and institutional structures. I’m proud that our Fresno State faculty have already taken this step on our campus to protect an ethnic studies requirement for our students, but unfortunately this is not the case at all our CSU campuses; and unfortunately, the Chancellor’s office, as well our Statewide Academic Senate have been slow to act on their own volition. Just like a math class, we believe ethnic studies provides equipment for living—giving students the knowledge and understanding to transform their lives and create a more just world for all of us.  

AB 930 is another CFA sponsored legislation making its way through committees that will require greater accountability and transparency in the CSU. The bill would require the CSU Board of Trustees to have a two meeting process in order to adopt executive compensation increases (right now they can propose and vote on executive salary increases in the same meeting). The bill also would freeze executive compensation in years where there is a tuition increase. Additionally, the bill would require quarterly campus budget checks and the CSU to compile a system wide report and provide the report to the legislature and Department of Finance. Given the recent independent state audit revealing the lack of transparency with how the Chancellor’s office spends (or socks away) its discretionary funds—while asking students to pay more and faculty to do more with less—increasing accountability and transparency is something that has to be high on our priority list.  

Disinvesting from Migrant Detention Centers
In keeping with our efforts to promote social justice on our campuses and beyond, we are also calling on faculty to urge CalPERS, our pension system, to stop investing in two private, for- profit, prison corporations—CoreCivic and GEO Group. These two companies operate the largest family detention centers in the US where the majority of the detainees are seeking asylum. I’m sure you have seen the abusive, inhumane conditions and human rights violations occurring at these facilities. CalSTRS has already divested from these two groups this past November, and given the number of lawsuits targeting these two groups, it makes financial sense to do so, but more importantly, calling on CalPERS to divest from these corporations is part of what it means to be a union motivated not just by individual interest, but by the common good.

Workshops and Events! Your CFA Chapter will once again be offering a number of workshops and social events throughout the year.

• Following up on our Unconscious Bias workshops from the last few years, CFA is now offering an Interrupting Racism Workshop Friday, August 23rd, 11:30-4:30. Lunch will be provided 11:30-12:30 with the workshop starting immediately following. The workshop may already be filled, but you can get on a waitlist, and if there is significant demand, we will try to offer another one later in the year.

• Our CFA Faculty luncheons will be held once a month again. And our first opportunity to socialize will be this Friday, August 23rd in the Vintage Room 4-7pm as we will be hosting our Welcome Back Social!

Whew! That was a lot of information for one email, but it’s been a busy summer!  

To keep up-to-date on all our activities, visit our Chapter website:
https://www.calfac.org/csu-fresno 

To find your CFA Department Representative you can use the following link below and if you don’t see a CFA Rep for your department, consider becoming one! Just let us know you are interested, and we’ll get you connected:
https://www.calfac.org/fresno-department-reps 

Thanks to your CFA Chapter Faculty Rights and Leadership Team and thank you for your support of our faculty union!

https://www.calfac.org/fresno-executive-board 

To become a member of CFA, join on-line at:

https://www.calfac.org/join-cfa 

In unity and union,
Diane Blair 
CFA Fresno Chapter, President