Budget impasse threatens funding

State Budget impasse threatens funding for employee compensation
The faculty and staff employees unions are joining with CSU Administrators to urge the legislature to not cut the CSU budget. According to the staff employees union the possible budget cuts “would undermine improved working relationships between the CSU and unions representing its employees.”

Strike Averted

Faculty Strike Averted - Bee Says
According to the Sacramento Bee, Administrators and faculty at California State University announced a tentative contract agreement Tuesday, eliminating the prospect of faculty strikes scheduled to start next week.

The agreement marks the beginning of the end for a negotiation process that stretched nearly two years. The deal, if ratified, would raise the average salary of a tenure-track faculty member from $74,000 to $90,749 over four years, CSU officials said. The average salary for a full-time, full professor with tenure will go from $86,000 to $105,465.

SJSU Strike Date Set

April 18 & 19, From CFA:
By now most of you know that a 94% vote to authorize rolling strikes has brought the CSU administration back to the bargaining table. Your participation in the strike vote helped make this happen. We have extended the contract by 10 days to see if we can negotiate a fair contract based on the very favorable fact-finder’s report.

As all of CFA’s leadership has said, we are cautiously optimistic that a deal can be achieved. While somewhat hopeful, we have been disappointed before and we believe that it is only prudent for us to continue to prepare for a strike should the administration waver in its commitment to settle. For nearly two years we have been pushing this rock up a very steep hill; we are now just 10 feet from the top. If we stop pushing now we could find ourselves back at the bottom of the hill with no momentum and no leverage.

If the administration wavers, we must be prepared to shut the campuses down. And if thousands of faculty sign up for picket duty, that also will stop any wavering by the administration.

Should we fail to achieve a settlement by the end of the 10 day contract extension, our campus will be going out on strike on Wednesday and Thursday, April 18 and 19.

Strike News - From the University

To the Campus Community –
California State University’s Assistant Vice Chancellor for Human Resources Samuel Strafaci sent this update on contract negotiations with the CFA to presidents of the system’s 23 campuses today, following publication of fact-finding recommendations and a meeting of the CSU Board of Trustees. President Don W. Kassing asked that it be shared with all SJSU faculty, staff and students.

Subject: BOARD OF TRUSTEES MEETING REPORT
March 25, 2007

CSU Presidents:
The CSU Board of Trustees today deferred a decision on fact-finding recommendations. The contract has been extended until April 6, 2007, to allow the parties to use the fact-finding panel’s report as a basis for settlement. There will be no concerted strike activity during this period.

Samuel A. Strafaci
Assistant Vice Chancellor
Human Resources

Strike News - From Faculty Union

CFA HEADLINES
March 25, 2007 - SPECIAL STRIKE EDITION FROM CFA

BREAKING NEWS: FACT-FINDING REPORT SUPPORTS CFA’S PROPOSAL ON NEARLY ALL COUNTS
The administration must now face the facts and settle a fair contract

The fact-finding report recommending how to end the bargaining impasse between CFA and the CSU administration became public on March 25. CFA immediately called on the administration to Face the Facts, accept the report’s recommendations, and settle the contract.

“We call on the Chancellor of the CSU to return to the bargaining table and settle an agreement now based on the fact finder’s report,”   said John Travis, CFA President. “If he refuses then he forces us to proceed with a strike. That is not what we want and it’s not what the CSU needs.”

To view the fact finders recommendations as well as the fact finding reports from both CFA and the CSU administration please visit: http://www.calfac.org/factfinding.html

More news to come on this developing story in Tuesday’s regular edition of CFA Headlines.

Staff union contract requires crossing CFA picket lines

The Staff Union Contract Requires Crossing Faculty Picket Lines
Article 6.2 of the new California State Employees Union (CSUEU) contract says, “The Union shall not promote, organize or support any strike or other concerted activity, including sympathy strikes, which would interfere with or adversely affect the operations or mission of the CSU.” This is why in my role as a staff member I voted against the ratification of this staff union contract. I do not think any union should sign a contract with a clause like this in it. The thought that it is in our contract just makes me sick.

AFL-CIO on the strike

From the South Bay AFL-CIO to area labor activists:

Looming Crisis in Our State University System
Urgent Action Needed!
Click here to send a message to CSU Chancellor Charles Reed.

Nearly two years after the contract affecting more than 24,000 California State University (CSU) faculty members expired, CSU faculty - represented by the California Faculty Association (CFA) - have overwhelmingly voted to strike. If an agreement is not reached soon, a series of two-day rolling strikes will hit the 23 CSU campuses as far north as Humboldt and as far south as San Diego. This will be the first-ever system wide strike against the CSU, and the largest university strike in the history of the United States.

The key issue holding up an agreement is faculty pay. CFA members make on average 18 percent less than their colleagues at other universities and colleges, making it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain the quality faculty members that working class students need and deserve. We are also extremely concerned about unrestrained workload increases, reductions in job security, and expanded use of temporary and non-benefited faculty.

In addition to these traditional labor issues and the anti-union attitudes displayed by the California State University administration, there are larger issues in the CSU that affect all working families and reflect the leadership’s corporate mentality. These issues include:

• Huge student fee increases;
• Reduction in course availability;
• Larger class sizes; and,
• Less faculty time for non-classroom interaction with students such as advising and mentoring.

While the CSU administration is increasingly starving students and faculty members, they have granted huge executive pay increases and paid departing executives and administrators enormous sums for frivolous no-work projects.

Siegler to Faculty on Strike

This document was sent to me [PDF]. I was told it was sent to all SJSU faculty with this explanation:

Enclosed please find a message from Provost Carmen Sigler regarding campus concerted activities.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Strike News From CFA

CFA HEADLINES
March 21, 2007 • SPECIAL EDITION

FACULTY UNITED!

94 percent vote to support a strike; voter turnout is 81 percent; bargaining crisis inspires 1,300 new members to join the union.

Any lingering questions about the solidarity and resolve of the California State University faculty were answered resoundingly Wednesday by the results of the first strike vote in the history of the California Faculty Association.

A stunning 94  percent of the voters agreed that the CSU’s professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches should initiate rolling walkouts if the CSU administration continues to reject bringing their salaries in line with their peers across the country.

More than 8,000 voters—an extraordinary 81 percent of the CFA membership—turned out to send an unmistakable message to Chancellor Charles B. Reed.

Here’s how CFA President John Travis summarized that message: “Faculty don’t want to strike, we want to teach. But in my 30 years at the CSU I’ve never seen us more united. Faculty members are taking a stand and it starts with insisting that the chancellor make us an equitable salary offer. We won’t settle for less.”

The pro-strike-authorization numbers rang across all 23 CFA chapters. On only one campus was the vote in favor of striking as low as 79 percent.

An equally telling number is the 1,300 faculty who have been moved to join CFA during the recent months of the bargaining crisis and impasse. Taken together, the landslide strike authorization and the union’s growing ranks leave no doubt that faculty have the capacity to shut down the university if an agreement cannot be reached, and reached quickly, said CFA Vice President Lillian Taiz.

“There will be hundreds of faculty and supporters from other unions on the picket lines,” predicted Taiz, a leader of CFA’s field operations, “and we think they will be joined by students and staff who are as fed up as we are.”

Chancellor Reed blasted at Capitol hearing
There was great symmetry in Wednesday morning’s historic events. Even as Travis, Taiz and other CFA leaders were announcing the League of Women Voters-certified strike-vote totals at Dominguez Hills, Charlie Reed was getting grilled at the State Capitol in Sacramento.

At a special hearing of the Senate Education Committee’s subcommittee on the budget, legislators pressed Reed about his scandalous “Executive Transition Program” handouts to CSU executives, and the chancellor struggled with evasive and incoherent responses.

But when the hearing ended, Reed got no relief: he was immediately encircled by scores of reporters insisting on his reactions to the strike announcement just issued in Southern California. The San Francisco Chronicle called it a “one-two punch.”

A sampling of the media coverage of today’s historic developments can be viewed at http://calfac.org/inthenews.html

CFA’s news release about the strike vote is at http://www.calfac.org/allpdf/newsreleas/2007_pressrel/PR_032107_Strike_Vote_Count.pdf

Clearly, Reed’s policies and style have united CSU faculty as never before.

CFA Board votes to implement rolling strikes on all 23 CSU campuses as 10-day “quiet period” ends
On Wednesday evening the CFA Board of Directors met and, by unanimous vote, made it official, turning the strike authorization into a strike plan with teeth.

The Board empowered the CFA officers and Field Team (who organized the strike vote) to make a final decision on which days and which campuses will begin the two-day walkouts in the initial round of job actions. Out of necessity, planning has been under way for months.

The first walkouts are expected in April but may occur sooner. Once the fact-finder’s recommendations are made public this Sunday, at the conclusion of the 10-day “quiet period” mandated by state law, the faculty are legally entitled to undertake job actions—to go on strike.

The expectation is that Chancellor Reed will ignore the recommendations of the fact-finding report and quite possibly attempt to unilaterally impose working conditions on the faculty.

If he does either, a strike will begin shortly thereafter.

Signs of a strike at SJSU