CSU and Faculty Union Agree to End Strike After One Day

The California Faculty Association strike of the 23 campuses of California State University ended on Monday evening following 1 day of a planned 5 day strike with a surprise tentative agreement being struck between both sides.

Early in 2023, CSU workers began talks of a strike following years of complaining about financial hardships. Over the summer, the faculty union began negotiating a new contract with CSU, hoping to avoid yet another strike in the state. CSU faculty, who are currently paid on average $99,000 for full-time work,$67,000 for part-time work, and just above $50,000 for lecturers, asked for a 12% across-the-board raise. CSU countered with a 5% raise. By August, both sides stopped talking because of a lack of progress, inviting in an independent arbiter.

Demands soon became solidified. In addition to the 12% raise, the CFA demanded an additional parental leave increase from six weeks to a full semester, more gender-inclusive bathrooms, pay equity, more manageable work loads, more mental health counselors, and more lactating facilities for faculty with babies. Despite CSU still showing willingness to talk with the union over the issues, the CFA, with members at all 23 CSU campuses across the state, voted on authorizing a strike in late October.

In December, the first strikes occurred, with 4 separate one-day strikes happening at various CSU campuses. Following those, CSU raised their offer, offering 15% over 3 years instead of the 12% over 1 year that the CFA stubbornly refused to budge from. However, the CFA rejected this as well. With talks breaking down once more, a more severe 5 day strike encompassing all campuses in the system was announced for this week. While a deal was made with 1,100 Teamsters campus workers during the weekend to avoid a separate strike, no such deal was made with the CFA. On Monday, the CFA did as promised, with tens of thousands of employees walking off at the 23 CSU campuses. With no talks being scheduled, it was widely expected that the strike would last all 5 planned days, with a new negotiation session to be formed following that.

However, with pressure mounting and many in California calling out the union for asking for so much more money during a lean time for both CSU and the state, the CFA quickly cut a deal Monday night, catching many off guard with the sudden end to the strike. Under the new deal made Monday night, most of the terms were what CSU had wanted or originally offered in the first place with the 12% raise figure, seen as a line in the sand to most union leaders being significantly diminished. The deal will give a 5% raise to all faculty retroactive to July of 2023, with another 5% raise coming in July of 2024. Yearly step increases and minimum pay rises were also added in as sweeteners to get the CFA to agree to a new contract that didn’t include the 12% raise.

The contract, which will remain into effect until the end of 2025, will also see additional weeks of maternity leave, more gender-inclusive bathrooms, more lactating facilities, and the inclusion of a union representative in instances when faculty and police have an interaction.

A new tentative contract

In a statement on Monday night, CFA President Charles Toombs said that “The collective action of so many lecturers, professors, counselors, librarians, and coaches over these last eight months forced CSU management to take our demands seriously. This Tentative Agreement makes major gains for all faculty at the CSU.”

In case anyone forgot, STRIKES WORK! After months of negotiations, our movement for a #betterCSU has paid off! Our members have won a Tentative Agreement with @calstate that includes raising the floor for our most vulnerable faculty, safer workplaces & expanded parental leave.#1u pic.twitter.com/q9VXHO0P6p

— California Faculty Association (@CFA_United) January 23, 2024

CSU Chancellor Mildred Garcia, meanwhile, praised the deal in a statement, adding that “I am extremely pleased and deeply appreciative that we have reached common ground with CFA that will end the strike immediately. The agreement enables the CSU to fairly compensate its valued, world-class faculty while protecting the university system’s long-term financial sustainability.”

Professors and the other roughly 30,000 CFA employees that struck on Monday returned to work on Tuesday. While ratification of the new agreement is ahead, the strike, for all intents and purposes, is now over. However, experts told the Globe that, while the CFA said that they had gained a lot on the strike, they in reality had to lose a lot of what they wanted for the deal to go through.

“CFA lost on Monday,” said John Waithe, a Chicago-based higher education researcher, to the Globe on Tuesday. “It ended pretty fast, showing just how much they were looking for to cut a deal. They didn’t get the 12%, nor did they go with the universities previous best offer of 15% over 3 years. They got 10% over two. They got a bunch of little things too like step increases, the bathrooms they wanted, more lactation locations. But the things they really wanted on they compromised on in the end, after saying for so long that they didn’t. Notice in all their press releases and posts on X and everything that they never once mention raises. Any union who gets a big contract after a strike always brags about how much more they’re getting. The CFA, well, they’re getting less than what they had wanted.”

“It’s also why we’re seeing CSU people celebrating this. They didn’t have the money for huge raises, stuck by their guns, and, most importantly, won over the public and students. And we’re talking Californian University students who have shown a penchant for protesting and wanting to support unions. When a union loses them to an argument that ‘the man’, or in this case, CSU made, you know you had been asking for too much.”

More on the CSU-CFA agreement is to come out soon.