To strike, or not to strike — this is the real question put upon Cal Poly faculty this week as the state faculty union announced plans to strike if current contract negotiations fall through.
Beginning April 16, the California Faculty Association (CFA) asked its members across the California State University (CSU) system to vote on a possible strike if an acceptable agreement is not reached over contract negotiations. Among the issues being debated are class sizes, tenure appointments, lecturer contracts, sabbaticals and faculty salaries.
Striking a stance
Cal Poly faculty members have been voting on the possible strike since Monday of last week, despite originally being scheduled to only start voting yesterday. So far, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, Cal Poly’s CFA Chapter President Glen Thorncroft said.
“I can honestly say, it’s been almost universal disdain for the way contract bargaining is going, almost universal disdain for the Chancellor,” Thorncroft said. “Faculty are really fed up. They’re watching their salaries lose out to inflation, they’re watching their colleagues be laid off and they’re watching the Chancellor give hefty raises to the administration at the same time.”
CSU Chancellor Charles Reed is the major force stopping the two groups from reaching an agreement, Thorncroft said. When it came time for contract to be renegotiation in 2010, the CFA proposed minor amendments to the contracts, many of which were low or no cost changes, but Reed refused, according to Thorncroft.
“Bargaining means you bargain, and he’s not bargaining,” Thorncroft said. “He’s not moving from his position, and by definition, that’s not bargaining. And that’s why we’re trying to get him to move, and sometimes you have to move somebody by force.”
The Association’s show of force could appear in the form of a statewide two-day rolling strike as soon as this spring in which all CSU campuses would be split into groups to protest over consecutive days, according to the faculty association’s website.
Though class time and money would be lost if faculty choose to strike, they would be taking a stance on something that is more important, CFA communications specialist Brian Ferguson said.
“Our position has always been, we don’t want to strike, but we will if we have to,” Ferguson said. “We’d much rather be in the classrooms working with students and teaching, than out on the picket-lines, but we think this is … something we have to do.”
Despite the possible interruption, the union has received a lot of support for the proposed strike so far, Ferguson said.
“What we’re seeing from the faculty is they’re very upset about what’s going on on campus,” Ferguson said. “The question of priorities has really encouraged faculty to come out in great numbers in support.”
Priorities in debate
One such priority comes in the form of lecturer contracts.
Lecturers in the CSU system are traditionally signed on for a three-year period and are chosen by members in the department. Reed has proposed that those three-year contracts be reduced to one-year contracts, to be reviewed not by the department, but by the campus president to preserve lecturer quality.
This could lead to already employed lecturers fired and being asked to re-apply under the new regulations for less pay, as happened at Northwestern University in February, Thorncroft said.
“It’s a classic corporate America strategy that I wish would not touch us,” Thorncroft said.
Cal Poly English professor Johanna Rubba said changes to lecturer contracts are one of the negative parts of Reed’s proposals, because it will decrease the stability of the department. She said it will also create unnecessary time burdens upon campus presidents.
“The president isn’t going to have the time to review all that — he’s busy enough as it is,” Rubba said. “They’re going to hire more administrators to do that, and who knows if those people will have any idea of what the department does.”
Another topic of debate during the 22-month bargaining between the CFA and the CSU are increases in executive compensation for campus presidents.
San Diego State University (SDSU) President Elliot Hirshman receives $350,000 annually, plus a $50,000 stipend from the SDSU Foundation, making him the highest paid executive in the CSU system, according to a CSU executive compensation fact sheet. Cal Poly’s own Jeffrey Armstrong was also making headlines upon his appointment as president in 2011. At that time, Armstrong became the second-highest paid CSU executive in the system — his base salary is $350,000 a year, plus $30,000 from the Cal Poly Foundation, according to the fact sheet.
The discrepancies between increasing executive compensation and faculty salaries, which have remained the same since 2007, are creating tension between administration and faculty, Rubba said.
“It should be, you know, we’re all in this together,” Rubba said. “But the Chancellor is kind of drawing this line between the higher executives and the rest of the university, saying they are somehow privileged and higher than us.”
Comparing presidential salaries to current faculty salaries is like comparing apples to oranges though, CSU media specialist Erik Fallis said.
“If you have a sitting executive — someone who has been in their position since 2007 — they have not received an increase,” Fallis said. “New hiring decisions are a different point than faculty who are already hired.”
And contrary to popular opinion, faculty have received pay raises in those years, Fallis said.
“Faculty actually have received increases of about $60 million between ‘08 and 2010,” Fallis said. “That’s pretty significant.”
This includes promotional increases such as an associate professor being promoted to professor, as well as equity raises in which lower-paid faculty individuals were paid more to bring them up to the department standard, Fallis said.
Thorncroft said though there was some money that could have gone to faculty for equity raises and promotions, since the state pulled funding from CSUs, it has not gone where it needed to: toward cost of living increases and more tenure-track hirings.
Mediation and beyond
To aid the CSU and faculty association in reaching an agreement, both groups have agreed to go into mediation, Fallis said.
As a part of the mediation process, the two groups are currently gathering all of the relevant information to support their decisions and will present their findings to a panel made of outside parties, Fallis said. From there, the panel will issue a report, which the CSU and faculty association could then choose to support or refuse.
“It’s a complicated process,” Fallis said. “Negotiations always are.”
Because this process hasn’t been completed, the association doesn’t have the ability to strike as of yet, Fallis said.
“It’s really premature right now — the faculty union can’t legally strike,” Fallis said. “It really presumes failure on the part of the CFA. Where the CSU might be approaching this from getting a report done, the CFA seems to be presuming failure.”
Whether or not it is presuming failure, the faculty association will continue with the strike vote. Until a decision has been made, the effect a strike would have on Cal Poly will remain unknown, Cal Poly Provost Kathleen Enz Finken said.
“It depends on what the decision is, on what they decide,” Enz Finken said. “Until there is more clarity on what they are planning, we really don’t know.”
Faculty have a difficult decision ahead of them though, she said.
“Faculty on a campus such as this, they don’t want to short-change students,” Enz Finken said. “That’s not what they are here for. But you get to a certain point where you are kind of pushed against a wall. People are frustrated, salaries are not good (and) they’re working hard.”
Faculty must also factor in not being paid for the days they strike, Finken said.
“Since the salary issue is already troubling, and there’s plenty of people who are not in a good place financially, that would be another reduction in their pay,” Finken said. “I can’t answer for faculty, but I think for many of them, it’s a struggle to have to be put into this position and make those kind of decisions.”
Strike voting will continue until Friday. Only CFA members are eligible to vote, though faculty can sign up for membership at the Cal Poly chapter office in the Mathematics and Science building, room 141. Votes can be submitted both electronically and to the CFA office between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.