Dear Colleagues, 

Welcome back to campus as the 2026-27 academic year begins. I hope you were able to rest and spend time with loved ones. Refilling our cups is essential to showing up prepared for our students, our communities, and each other. 

As a collective, a crucial way we show up for each other is by organizing together to fight for fair wages, better working conditions, and job protections from austerity measures and AI bots. As we are very far apart from management on the provisions of a new contract, we hope you will sign this pledge to join us in fighting for a new collective bargaining agreement to fund the classroom. 

After good-faith negotiations, we declared impasse on July 10 over CSU management’s failure to grasp how to retain faculty and move the future of education forward. The Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) recognized that our arguments for declaring impasse were sound, so PERB moved CFA and CSU management to mediation, the next statutory stage of bargaining. 

Our first mediation meeting is scheduled for early September. If mediation does not result in an agreement, the mediator will certify the parties to factfinding, the next step of the process defined by state law. We will keep you updated as the process continues. 

Securing a strong contract is just as important as how we show up for our students in our classrooms, libraries, counseling centers, and athletic facilities. Fair pay, adequate working conditions, and the ability to shape our pedagogy and curriculum without administrative pressures or interference all have an impact on our well-being and our capacity to support our students at the highest levels. 

Our core fight package includes our bargaining proposals for the existing contract articles on salary, workload, and appointment, as well as two new stand-alone articles on academic freedom and AI: 

  • CFA wants full-time equivalent faculty to be paid at least 10% of the chancellor’s base salary, all faculty to receive a cost-of-living increase every year, and automatic yearly step increases to move faculty up the salary structure.  
  • We demand an end to overwork and free work in the classroom, library, mental health clinics, and athletic facilities. This means courses need to have predictable caps on enrollment, research must be compensated, counselors and librarians must have more flexibility in their work schedules, and faculty on temporary contracts should be compensated for service work.  
  • CFA proposed several changes to improve job security for faculty with temporary contracts. These changes include management giving official notice for appointments at least four weeks in advance, creating a more accessible pathway for faculty on temporary contracts to transition into tenure-track or permanent positions, and requiring that each campus have a minimum of 50% of its counselor faculty be appointed into either tenured or probationary appointments.  
  • We demand that faculty members shall not be punished or retaliated against for exercising rights to free speech, expression, and assembly either in the performance of university duties or in engagement and expression outside the classroom, office, library, sports arena, clinic, the university, the larger academic community, or the community at large. 
  • Faculty need protections for using or refusing to use AI technology, professional development resources to adapt pedagogy to incorporate the technology, and further protections for faculty intellectual property. 

Every faculty union member who joins us increases our ability to win this core fight package to ensure that we fund the classroom, and not the boardroom. Commit to engaging in our CFA Bargaining Campaign by pledging to talk to your students and colleagues about our fight, participating in campus actions and activities, and attending bargaining meetings. 

In the meantime, we need to keep building momentum on our campuses and as a statewide union. As we escalate our campaign, we want to ensure you and your students are prepared for all outcomes this fall, including a potential strike. We encourage you to include the sample language (or some version of it) below in your syllabus, Canvas page, LibGuides, or other similar communications to students: 

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Important note about a possible work stoppage during the semester 

The California Faculty Association (the union that represents all CSU faculty, including lecturer faculty, tenure-line faculty, coaches, counselors, and librarians) is in the midst of a difficult contract dispute with the CSU system-wide administration. In response to the CSU management’s stance, it is possible that the faculty union will call a strike or other work stoppage this term. I promise to inform the class as soon as possible of any disruption to our class meeting schedule. For further information about the issues involved in the strike, please see the resources at: 

www.calfac.org and www.cfabargaining.org 

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Please take a moment to sign this pledge for our campaign to Fund the Classroom, Not the Boardroom. Each pledge builds our collective power. Together, we will keep showing up for each other and fighting for what we deserve. 

In union,
Margarita Berta-Ávila
President, California Faculty Association
Professor of Education, College of Education
Sacramento State University 

I live, work, and organize on the Miwok, Maidu, and Nisenan lands. 

Join CFA
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