Jan. 19--Hundreds of thousands of Cal State University students will not have to worry about their professors going out on strike after the union representing faculty members failed to authorize a work stoppage on Tuesday.
That reprieve may be temporary, however. The leaders of the California Faculty Assn. warned they could still hit the picket line in the near future if their salary demands are not met.
"Faculty are ready and willing" to go on strike, said union President Jennifer Eagan, a professor at Cal State East Bay in Hayward.
The union, which represents nearly 26,000 professors, lecturers, counselors, librarians and athletic coaches at the 23-campus system, and Cal State administrators have been deadlocked since June over salary increases for the 2015-16 academic year.
The union has demanded a general 5% pay hike. Cal State Chancellor Timothy P. White has offered a 2% increase.
Faculty members say they are underpaid after going without a raise for five years before getting a 1.34% increase in 2013 and a 1.6% boost in 2014. More than half of Cal State faculty make less than $38,000 a year in gross earnings, according to the union.
Cal State administrators dispute the union's figures and say tenure-track faculty hired as assistant professors had a base pay of $72,519 in 2014 for 9 1/2 months of work.
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Administrators also said that a 5% increase wouldn't leave enough money to increase enrollment and address other priorities for the system that served about 460,000 students in 2014.
Last fall, 94% of the union's voting members authorized a strike if no salary deal could be reached. On Tuesday, Eagan and other faculty leaders said they would reassess their options after several weeks.
Rusty Hicks, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said his union would support CSU faculty if they choose to strike and would not cross picket lines. "We are standing shoulder to shoulder in solidarity," he said.
Faculty have taken four strike votes since 2007 but only held one action, when employees at the East Bay and Dominguez Hills campuses conducted one-day strikes.
The union filed an unfair labor practice complaint against management in November, alleging that White and others were negotiating in bad faith. That matter has not been resolved.
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