How Our Health Care May Be at Stake if We Don't Fight

If you care about keeping the affordable health care CSU faculty enjoy, one of management’s bargaining proposals should alarm you and spur you to join our CFA campaign to Fund the Classroom.

Right before we declared impasse this summer, management presented a proposal to establish a “Health Benefits Review Work Group” to discuss topics like enrollment trends, employer contribution levels, and comparable public employer practices.  

Management proposed that each CSU union assign up to two representatives to the work group, which is an advisory body that “may inform future discussions regarding the health benefits program in bargaining.”  

The entire proposal is a step toward shifting health care costs to faculty. It’s management-speak for seeking to impose higher premiums, higher copays, and worse health care coverage. The proposed workgroup would lead to cuts to health benefits, which would be cuts to our overall compensation.  

Brain Dolber, CFA Bargaining Team Member and CSU San Marcos Professor, said that with the current faculty health benefits, he paid $15 for colon cancer treatment from start to finish. But through management’s proposed work group, Dolber warned that Chancellor Mildred García wants to change those benefits. 

“Will faculty be forced onto less comprehensive plans?” Dolber questioned. “Will their copays increase? Will they go into medical debt? At best, the chancellor’s plan will amount to a pay cut while inflation increases. At worst, it will prevent faculty and their families access to necessary life-saving medical care.”  

Together, CFA members can fight against this effort to shift health care costs to faculty. We can talk to our colleagues about how our bargaining proposals would improve working conditions and compensation for all faculty, while management’s proposals devalue and disrespect us. We can show up to union meetings and town halls and participate in campus actions. 

Everyone has a role to play in our campaign, and we are stronger together. Sign our CFA Solidarity Pledge today to show you are ready to fight for the health benefits and overall contract we deserve. After you sign, talk to at least five of your colleagues about it and encourage them to sign and to spread the word. This is going to take all of us in solidarity with each other.