Cal State and its faculty reach a tentative deal
The California State University system and the union representing thousands of professors and lecturers said Monday evening that they had reached a tentative agreement to raise wages, quickly ending what was the largest university faculty strike in the history of the United States. US was.
The news came on the first day of what was planned as a five-day strike by the California Faculty Association, the union that represents 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches on all 23 Cal State campuses.
The faculty members will return to work Tuesday, union officials said.
“The collective action of so many teachers, professors, counselors, librarians and coaches over the past eight months forced CSU leadership to take our demands seriously,” Charles Toombs, president of the union, said in a statement.
The deal would immediately increase salaries for all faculty members by 5 percent, retroactive to July 1, 2023, with another 5 percent effective July 1, 2024, union officials said. It would also immediately raise the salary floor for the lowest-paid faculty members by $3,000 and increase paid parental leave from six to 10 weeks.
Mildred García, the university system's chancellor, said in a statement Monday evening that she was “extremely pleased” with the deal, adding that it “allows the CSU to fairly compensate its valued world-class faculty while term of the university system.” long-term financial sustainability.”
University leaders and the faculty union had been negotiating since May, in the middle of what turned out to be an intense year of work in California, especially for teachers.
That same month, teachers, librarians and others in Oakland's public schools went on strike for nearly two weeks. Two months earlier, school workers in Los Angeles organized a major strike. There were also the Hollywood strikes and a busy period of other strikes in Los Angeles that became known as the “hot summer of labor.”
At the University of California, the state's other four-year university system, tens of thousands of academic workers walked out for nearly six weeks in 2022 to protest low wages.
The actions reflect a national trend of frustration among workers over salaries that have not kept pace with inflation and high home prices. That pressure is especially acute in California, where the cost of living is so high that even people in traditionally high-paying professions struggle to make ends meet.
Many of the Cal State system's campuses are located in the nation's most expensive housing markets, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and San Jose.
On Monday, before the deal was announced, I went to San Jose State University and spoke with strikers in red ponchos who had surrounded the campus and chanted “Overeducated and undercompensated.”
San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley, is in a county that has become so expensive that the federal government last year deemed a family of four earning as much as $137,100 a year “cheap.” low income.
Hien Do, a sociology professor who has taught at San Jose State for 31 years, told me he remembered how difficult it was even decades ago for him and his wife, who works at a nonprofit, to buy a house. payable in the state of San Jose. San Jose area. Now, he said, that's nearly impossible for younger faculty members.
After the contract agreement was reached, I spoke with Ray Buyco, senior lecturer in the history department at San Jose State. He noted that the union had not met its goal of a 12 percent pay increase for all faculty members, but he said he was proud of the immediate increase in the salary floor.
“This is a real big win for the lowest-paid among us,” said Buyco, who works several jobs to pay for life in Silicon Valley. “For a lot of people, it will really impact their lives in a good way.”
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And before you go: good news
Dedicated surfers flocked to Half Moon Bay in Northern California last month for a day of surfing in extreme conditions, fueled by the weather pattern known as El Niño. The surfers gathered on December 28 at Mavericks Beach, a popular big-wave surfing destination just south of San Francisco, after weather reports predicted particularly large waves driven by a series of winter storms. The swell, which broke records this year and was among the largest in recent decades, included waves up to 18 meters high. KRON 4 reports.
The unusual conditions drew professional big-wave surfers from across the Bay Area and outside the United States. Many were captured on film by Tucker Wooding, a surf videographer, who shared the footage with Surfer Magazine. They were “some of the heaviest waves I have ever seen,” Wooding told the newspaper.