Cal State Faculty Will Vote on Contract This Week
The California State University system and the union representing thousands of professors and lecturers reached a tentative agreement last month to raise wages, ending the largest strike by university faculty members in the history of the country just hours after it began USA A ratification vote will take place this week.
Some faculty members expressed displeasure with the deal shortly after it was reached, saying that union leaders, the California Faculty Associationwhich represents 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches, could have gotten better terms if they had not settled so quickly.
If ratified, the contract agreement would immediately increase salaries for all faculty members by 5 percent, retroactive to July 1, 2023, with another 5 percent scheduled for July 1, 2024, if the state does not cut funding for the university system. . The salary floor for the lowest-paid faculty members would immediately increase by $3,000 per year, and paid parental leave would increase from six to 10 weeks.
A simple majority vote is required to approve the contract. Voting started Monday and runs through Sunday; results are expected next week.
Union members from Bay Area campuses held a rally last month and formed a huge “No” on the campus of San Francisco State University to express their disapproval.
“My belief is that we can get something better,” said Mark Allan Davis, professor of Africana studies at San Francisco State. He told me he planned to vote against the contract.
Both the union and the university system applauded the deal when it was announced. Antonio Gallo, associate professor of the union for the state's southern region, said the agreement “greatly improves working conditions for teachers and strengthens learning conditions for students.”
Cal State Chancellor Mildred García said that “the agreement allows CSU to fairly compensate its valued world-class faculty while protecting the long-term financial sustainability of the university system.”
Disgruntled union members point out that the California Faculty Association had pushed for a 12 percent pay increase, a full semester of parental leave and other additional benefits. And they note that the second 5 percent increase, promised for the summer, is not guaranteed; it depends on the state not cutting base funding for the university system this year, a significant threat given California's budget deficit.
Angelina Moles, 30, currently earns $65,000 a year as a teacher in the communications department at San Francisco State. She also teaches at two other Bay Area universities, and models on the side, to make ends meet in expensive San Francisco.
At a recent protest, she held a sign saying that the chancellor's annual housing allowance alone was tens of thousands of dollars more than her annual salary.
“This 5 percent increase will mean absolutely nothing to me when it comes to my ability to pay my rent and live a safe life in San Francisco,” said Moles, who plans to vote against the deal. If the deal is rejected, the union and the university system will return to the bargaining table.
In a statement, Loren Cannon, a lecturer at Cal Poly Humboldt and a member of the union's bargaining team, acknowledged that some faculty members were disappointed. But he added: “As we have conversations with faculty about the details of the tentative agreement, it appears many support it. They recognize the movement of the CSU management that we achieved through our strikes in December and January and other solidarity and collective actions.”
Harry Katz, professor of collective bargaining at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told LAist this week that the pay increases included in the tentative deal were “not a terrible increase” given Cal State's financial pressures.
And disagreement among union members “does not mean that collective bargaining has failed,” he told the news station. “That's just a natural part of the process.”
And before you go: good news
Employees at the California Science Center in Los Angeles stepped back just after midnight on January 31 and breathed a sigh of relief. After nearly fourteen hours of work, the team successfully installed the Endeavor, a 178,000-pound space shuttle, into its new new bay. at home in the science center. It is the first shuttle to be displayed in a museum in launch position, standing upright with the nose pointed toward the stars, along the center.
Transporting and installing the shuttle at the site of what will become the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, the science center's newest expansion, was a two-day process.
Late on January 29, hundreds of enthusiastic spectators watched as the orbiter was lifted into the air by a 450-foot crane and attached to its giant external tank on the museum grounds. Crews returned the next night to tighten the bolts and complete the exhibit, which is 20 stories tall.
There was little room for error and the process was tense at times, but it turned out to be a success, said Jeffrey Rudolph, the science center's president and CEO. “This is that rare case where our dream, and even our renderings, are not as good as the real thing,” he told me, paraphrasing the museum curator's comments.
Endeavor was the last orbiter built as part of NASA's Space Shuttle program. It flew its first mission in 1992 and completed 25 missions in its 19-year history, including the first Hubble Telescope repair mission. NASA awarded the retired shuttle to the science center in 2011, a dream that became a reality for the small California museum. The Endeavor's arrival and parade through LA the following year drew more than a million people, Rudolph said.
Now that Endeavor is in place, construction of the new museum is expected to resume. When completed, the museum will house 100 aircraft and spacecraft, with Endeavor as the crown jewel. “Our goal is to help people understand science, engineering and technology,” Rudolph said, adding, “Space has an incredible ability to motivate and inspire.”