I’m going to dare talk about something other than the current primary.
In October of last year, my union, The California Faculty Association, voted to authorize a strike should negotiations stall. The California Faculty Association represents the 26,000 faculty members of the California State University system, from part-timers to full professors. We’re currently negotiating for a 5% raise, and the administration is locked in at 2%. With negotiations stalled, we will walk out on April 13-15 and 18-19. This is a vital and necessary step for a group that has gone without any kind of meaningful raise in almost a decade.
Some history:
I joined the faculty in the fall semester of 2010, after having finished my graduate degree in 2007 and living in New Mexico for two years, where I taught at UNM, before finally moving back to California in 2009. In that time this country saw one of the most devastating financial collapses in modern memory. Prior to the financial collapse, the CFA and the CSU system had negotiated a faculty raise based on the relatively flush coffers in California of 2006 and 2007. When the market fell, the CSU system asked to defer that raise, pleading poverty due to economic hardships. Wages and hiring were frozen; faculty were furloughed (taking a 10% cut in the process); and tuition was increased. On the other side of the coin, administrators (especially presidents) were hired, given raises, and lured in with perks such as cars and homes. The hiring freeze and furlough ended by the time I arrived in 2010, but the wages remained frozen. In fact, when I arrived, the CFA was still negotiating the 2008 contract because the CSU system was trying to use the economic downturn to grab all the takebacks it could, including benefits and retirement.
In November of 2011, two CSU campuses, East Bay and Dominguez Hills, went on strike, with faculty from neighboring campuses filling out the picket lines. Our voices were heard, but ultimately we only managed to stave off the takebacks.
In 2014 we negotiated a 1.6% general increase after years of nothing for the 2014/2015 school year, with an opening to renegotiate a raise for 2015/2016.
Now we’re asking for a measly 5% and the system is balking.
Current reality:
The median household income in California is about $51,000. The average wage of faculty members is $46,000. Many of those faculty members are only part time, however, and subsist on a mere $27,000 a year, with higher paid, tenured faculty helping to bump up the average. All raises for lecturers (non-tenured), who make up a majority of faculty, are negotiated through collective bargaining. While there are mechanisms in place to reward years of service, those too must be included in the collective bargaining apparatus. Indeed, without collective bargaining, for many dedicated lecturers, this is a dead-end job, with few prospects for increased pay or promotion. There is a system for range elevation, a kind of promotion to a new pay bracket, but that occurs only after having maxed out on contract bargained service increases.
Final Analysis:
The cost of a 5% raise would be $84 million. Many faculty members work at multiple schools, or at multiple jobs to make ends meet. They live huge distances from their campuses and still pay an upward of 40-50% of their paychecks toward housing. In terms of real money, a 5% raise would put approximately $125 a month extra in my bank account. That’s more food on the table, more toward my student loan, more chipped in so that my wife and I, one day, in the next twenty years, can have the down payment on a house. It’s a tiny bit to ask for those who have dedicated their lives to making higher education in California something to be proud of.
This April, we’re going on strike. We’re going on strike over a lousy 5%. This is why unions matter. This is why workers matter. This is why power in the hands of many matters. This is why democracy matters.
Support us in our strike.
For more information, visit www.calfac.org