Faculty at California State University, America’s largest public university system, began a historic weeklong strike on Monday as more than 30,000 workers walked off their jobs.
Professors, librarians, plumbers, electricians and other workers demanding higher pay and improved working conditions are striking. The five-day faculty work stoppage is the first to take place systemwide across Cal State’s 23 campuses.
The walkout comes two weeks after CSU officials ended contract negotiations with a unilateral offer of a 5% pay raise effective 31 January, far below the 12% hike that the union, the California Faculty Association, is seeking. California is one of the most expensive places to live in the US and pay has not kept up with the rising costs, faculty say.
“CSU management wants to maintain the status quo, which is not working for the vast majority of our faculty, students and staff,” Chris Cox, the CFA vice-president of racial & social justice, north, and a lecturer at San José State University, said in a statement. “In order for us to have a properly functioning system in years to come, we need to improve the working conditions for faculty and learning conditions for students.”
With the new semester beginning on Monday, classes for many of the system’s 450,000 students could be cancelled, unless faculty members individually decide to cross picket lines.
The CFA represents roughly 29,000 workers. They were joined on the picket lines by 1,100 CSU skilled trades workers represented by the Teamsters Local 2010, which has also not yet reached a new contract with the university.
Mildred Garcia, the Cal State chancellor, said on Friday in a video call with journalists that the university system had sought to avoid a strike but the union’s salary demands are simply not viable.
“We must work within our financial reality,” she said.
In December, CFA members staged one-day walkouts on four campuses in Los Angeles, Pomona, Sacramento and San Francisco to press for higher pay, more manageable workloads and increased parental leave. The CFA has also sought gender inclusive restrooms and changing rooms and more counselors for students but says management has ignored nearly all its demands.
The union says the university has money in its “flush reserve accounts” and could afford the salary increases with funds from operating cash surpluses and the $766m CSU has in emergency reserves.
“Our proposals are reasonable and absolutely necessary,” Dr Rong Chen, a CSU San Bernardino professor emeritus and CFA-San Bernardino president, said in a statement.
“We also know that the university has the money to fund them – if only it would get its priorities straight,” he added, pointing to the CSU reserves, recent raises for university presidents and the chancellors’s nearly $1m compensation package.
Leora Freedman, CSU’s vice-chancellor for human resources, said reserve funds cannot be tapped for wage hikes because they are meant for times of economic uncertainty or emergencies, including wildfires or earthquakes.
“We’ve made several offers with movement, and most recently a 15% increase that would be paid over three years, providing faculty a 5% increase each year. But the faculty union has never moved off its 12% demand for one year only,” she said.
The increase the union is seeking would cost the system $380m in new recurring spending, which the university can’t afford, Freedman said.
The university strike comes after a major year for the US labor movement. Last year, healthcare professionals, Hollywood actors and writers and auto workers staged high profile strikes as they picketed for better pay and working conditions.
In 2022, teaching assistants and graduate student workers in the University of California System went on strike for a month.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
