SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Members of the California Faculty Association overwhelmingly ratified a new contract with the California State University system, the union announced Thursday.
The agreement covers 29,000 instructional faculty, coaches, librarians and counselors across the 23 CSU campuses and will run through June 30, 2024. According to the CFA, over two weeks of voting, 95% of voting members supported the tentative agreement that was reached with CSU in December.
"After two hard-fought, member-driven years of bargaining, we have a new contract," Charles Toombs, president of CFA and professor of Africana Studies at San Diego State University, proclaimed in a statement. "This vote signifies that we can bargain for salary gains while at the same time moving our working conditions forward through an anti-racism and social justice lens. We are stronger together and our votes demonstrate that emphatically."
The agreement calls for faculty to receive:
-- a one-time payment of $3,500, prorated by each faculty member's 2020-21 timebase;
-- a 4% general salary increase, retroactive to last July 1;
-- up to a 4% salary increase, effective July 1, 2022, dependent on the state budget allocation to the CSU;
-- a 2.65% service salary increase during fiscal years 2021-22 and 2023-24 for all eligible faculty, including coaches, counselors and librarians; and
-- a 2.65% post-promotion increase during fiscal year 2022-23 for eligible faculty, including coaches, counselors and librarians.
CFA officials said the contract also makes strides toward the union's equity and social justice goals.
"While we understand that the Anti-Racism Social Justice Transformation we strive for cannot be accomplished solely through bargaining, this new contract moves us further in our struggles to relieve the cultural taxation burden of faculty and to firmly support faculty who face bias, including that based on caste," said Sharon Elise, CFA bargaining team member and professor of social justice at Cal State San Marcos. "We remain committed to our goals and look forward to working on alternatives to campus police, addressing needs for parental support, and resolving the problems of precarity too many of our faculty endure."
