Update, 6:20 p.m.:
Red-shirted faculty — clad in California Faculty Association shirts — engulfed the entrances of Sacramento State in picket lines on Thursday. Many were from Sacramento State, though others made the trek from around the state to show support. Chants started as early as 7 a.m. and ran through 5 p.m.
Teamsters-represented Sac State staff, Sac State students, and Sacramento elected officials and labor leaders joined them, both in their demonstrations and at a mid-day rally stationed at the J Street picket line.
Members and supporters of the California Faculty Association gather to rally during a strike at Sacramento State on Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023, in Sacramento, Calif.Janelle Salanga/CapRadio
“[Faculty] are what make the CSU,” said second-year student Michael Lee-Chang at the rally. “Thank you for coming out, and students are here to support you.”
Lee-Chang, who is a part of the university’s chapter of Students for Quality Education, led a crowd of hundreds in the answer-and-response chant: “What are we here for?” “A better CSU!”
“If faculty and professors are not prioritized, us as students will be affected,” added fourth-year Kendall Ward.
Ward, who is also with Sac State’s SQE chapter, alluded to a widespread message on faculty signs: ”Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions.”
Other students came out to show support, like Alexia Flores, who said she learned about the picket from her professors and through CFA tabling this week.
“There's a lot of things that, you know, professors are dealing with outside of school that students aren't aware of,” she said. “Students are living in their cars and so’s our professors, and I think it’s really devastating that this is something that we have to fight for, but it’s really important that we’re all here today.”
Members of the California Faculty Association picket during a strike at Sacramento State on Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023, in Sacramento, Calif.Claire Morgan/CapRadio
Original story, published 12 a.m.:
On Monday morning, a fall day taken straight from the pages of a Sacramento State brochure, a bright red table bearing the letters CFA — California Faculty Association — joined the foliage decorating the university’s library quad.
Kinesiology professor Kathy Jamison and social sciences librarian Melissa Cardenas-Dow handed out informational fliers to passing students. Jamison, the vice president of the Sac State chapter of the faculty union, was blunt about her expectations for turnout to the rolling statewide strike coming to the university campus.
“We expect the largest turnout of our four-day rolling strike,” she said. “Sac State is going to shut it down.”
Flyers in support of the California Faculty Association sit on a table at Sacramento State's library quad on Monday, Dec. 4, 2023.Claire Morgan/CapRadio
Less than a mile away, at the campus’ J Street entrance, a group of faculty gathered to scout out what will be the picket line’s main location Thursday.
The California Faculty Association represents nearly 30,000 lecturers, professors, coaches, counselors and librarians across the Cal State system, including the just under 1,900 faculty members at Sacramento State.
While not every strike participant will be chanting at the picket line — the basic ask is that supportive union members withhold labor, like teaching classes, grading and holding office hours — a strong crowd demonstrates support for the faculty.
As negotiations remain at a standstill, the work stoppage, which has cycled through San Francisco State, Cal Poly Pomona and Cal State Los Angeles, is meant to put pressure on the Cal State University bargaining team to meet faculty demands on salary and better working conditions, including paid parental leave, lactation rooms and gender-neutral bathrooms.
“Salary, of course, matters — people need to be able to pay the bills, they need to be able to take care of their families,” Jamison said. “But we are always fighting for those things that not only make us able to pay the bills, but make us able to show up with dignity, feeling safe, feeling respected and supported in the work that we will do.”
Why is the strike happening now?
Proposals haven’t been exchanged between the union and California State University bargaining teams since negotiations reached an impasse — meaning they’ve stalled due to limited progress — in late August.
Though faculty have discussed the potential of a strike since May, the ball really got rolling at the end of October, when over 95% of voting members of CFA voted in favor of authorizing a strike. The particulars of that action were decided early last month.
The start of December marked the public release of a report compiled by an independent fact-finder with recommendations for how to move forward on 15 separate items being negotiated. The university said it was willing to accept 13 of those, including the recommendation to increase paid parental leave from six to eight weeks and up the amount by which faculty can reduce their workload upon return from a leave.
But the two remaining issues are related to salaries and faculty workload, as money continues to be a contested item: the faculty union is asking for a 12% single-year salary increase for 2023-24, while the university system is firm on a 5% offer. The CFA is also seeking a contract that raises the salary floor for the lowest-paid union members.
“Any larger salary increases would force very difficult and painful decisions on our campuses and would trigger a reopening of salary negotiations with other labor unions,” said Leona Freedman, CSU’s vice chancellor of human resources, at a Dec. 1 press conference.
The other labor unions in question are the unions representing academic professionals and CSU staff. Both contracts contain clauses that mandate the reopening of salary negotiations should another union receive more than a 5% salary increase in their contract, though the Academic Professionals of California local voted down the tentative agreement.
While student advocacy group Students for Quality Education and the CFA have both pointed to CSU’s “high level of reserves and annual operating cash flow surpluses” as evidence the system has ample money to meet faculty demands, Freedman rebuffed the idea that CSU had funds to spare and noted reserves were for “emergency use.”
A CalMatters analysis of publicly available salary data released Dec. 1 found that Cal State system administrators, including presidents and chancellors, have seen their pay increase at a higher rate than full-time professors and lecturers over the past 15 years. And the new CSU chancellor will have a compensation package that nears $1 million, which has drawn ire from students in particular — the Board of Trustees voted earlier this year to approve that compensation package and a set of 5% tuition increases over the next 5 years.
Anticipated solidarity between students, faculty at picket line
Jamison, the Sac State CFA vice president, said the tuition increases have propelled many students into campus issues at large.
“They're pissed off about the tuition hike, and the way it was handled, even — how sneaky is that, to run those conversations in the summer when students aren't here?” she said.
Sacramento State associate professor Mya Dosch said students were “angry about the tuition hikes that seem to be directed toward management salaries.”
“You know, we tell them that our working conditions are their learning conditions,” they said. “And it's evident that there's been a lack of investment in those conditions.”
CFA signs prepared ahead of the strike, taken Dec. 6, 2023.Janelle Salanga/CapRadio
CFA will continue to stand with students on pushing back on the increases, Jamison added, and said she’s been seeing lots of student solidarity with faculty.
“Students know that they want their faculty to be paid well … so that they have quality faculty in the classroom,” she said. “Students in my classroom ask me every time we meet, ‘What’s going on with the strike? How can we be supportive?’”
The Sacramento State chapter of Students for Quality Education held teach-ins about faculty bargaining and demands and was present at weekly solidarity rallies held by the university’s CFA chapter last month.
Dosch laid out the rationale for doing a series of one-day strikes.
“We don’t want to hurt our students, we want to make sure that their instruction continues, and that gives a chance for management to come back to the table with us,” she said. “If they don’t, we can move onto something more.”
Students aren’t the only ones expected to be demonstrating — or skipping classes — in solidarity with striking faculty Thursday. (The university, according to a FAQ page it compiled for students on the strike, is telling students to continue to go to classes if they haven’t heard from instructors about cancellations.)
Trades workers represented by Teamsters Local 2010, which similarly went on a one-day strike last month, have also been showing up to the picket line and withholding labor in solidarity.
“Teamsters solidarity with CFA demonstrates the strength of their alliance and commitment to remain united until the CSU bargains in good faith and works with the unions to reach a fair contract,” according to a press release from the union.
The faculty union and CSU negotiators have not yet set a date to return to the bargaining table, and a contingent of rank-and-file faculty members across 10 CSU campuses, including Sacramento State, are pushing for escalating the strikes to put greater pressure on university leadership.
The CFA is also filing a first amendment lawsuit against CSU after the university sent out messages to CSU East Bay and CSU Fullerton faculty prohibiting them from discussing the strike during class time, alleging the messages violate CFA members’ free speech.
Editor’s note: CapRadio is licensed to Sacramento State, which is also an underwriter.
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