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California Faculty Association at CSU San Marcos |
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Letter from Chapter President Janet Powell (1/7/07) Happy New Year and welcome to another year without a new contract. As you know, faculty have been embroiled in contract negotiations with the Chancellor's office for two years. Reason has not prevailed. To kick off the next stage of our field campaign, we will hold informational pickets and strike vote information meetings at all 23 campuses. San Marcos events:
Lunch will be served at both events. Now is the time to stand up for yourself, your colleagues, and the students, since the administration refuses. It is imperative we send a message to Charlie Reed: faculty have had enough; we demand an end to executive corruption paid for at the expense of faculty and students. Faculty salaries lag behind those at comparable universities nationwide by 18%, not even factoring in the inflated costs to work in California. It has been projected that if the last best offer of the administration is accepted, we would be almost 20% behind in four years. So, after two years of bargaining, the best the Chancellor (who makes twice as much as the governor of the state) can offer is what amounts to a 14% raise for the majority of faculty over a four year period. That does not even keep up with the cost of living that ran at 3.4 percent last year, which means your last 3.5 percent raise is really a .1% augmentation. The CFA salary proposal alters the salary structure in such a way that within four years the salary gap will effectively close for Assistant and Associate Professors and will be halved for Fulls (that's how far behind Fulls are: 26.7 percent!). As the bargaining process has failed, CFA plans to conduct a strike authorization vote among members. Your positive vote to authorize strike actions comprises a necessary part of our overarching strategy to illustrate for Charlie Reed and the Board of Trustees faculty determination to be treated fairly and with dignity. Not authorizing job actions amounts to accepting the Chancellor's salary proposal. It means you think CFA should settle for a 14% raise over the next four years. The best way to avoid a strike is to prepare for one. Only when the Chancellor is convinced that faculty mean to revamp the salary structure to close the salary gap will we overcome pay inequity. If you vote to authorize CFA to authorize job actions, and in the interim CSU refuses to settle the contract, then the union will likely begin a series of rolling two-day strikes sometime in the spring. The campaign for this spring will be: "I don't want to strike, but I will". I realize that faculty do not want to hurt students or seem "unprofessional", but two-day rolling strikes are designed to minimize the impact on individual campuses; they don't hurt our students, but they may salvage the university. Currently, the CSU cannot adequately recruit or retain tenure-track faculty. This along with the fee increases do not help our students. Job actions pressure the administration responsible for injuring faculty and weakening the CSU. The union is only as strong as its members. The CSUSM Board of Directors and I are asking you to attend the information picket and to sign the commitment card to authorize a strike vote. This is not the vote to strike, but to authorize the CFA to take such action should circumstances so dictate. We also encourage you to put the following statement on your syllabi:
Stay tuned. |
