Cal State faculty reaches deal for more pay, ends strike on 23 campuses including Sac State

Within 24 hours of walking off the job, faculty across the California State University system have canceled their weeklong, systemwide strike after reaching a late-night deal with university administrators.

The California Faculty Association announced its new tentative agreement late Monday night, triumphantly pointing to the power of strikes and solidarity as the reason behind the swift deal. The union’s nearly 30,000 workers will return to work Tuesday instead of continuing their planned weeklong walkout.

“The collective action of so many lecturers, professors, counselors, librarians, and coaches over these last eight months forced CSU management to take our demands seriously,” said CFA President Charles Toombs in a statement late Monday evening. “This tentative agreement makes major gains for all faculty at the CSU.”

CSU Chancellor Mildred García also praised the agreement.

“I am extremely pleased and deeply appreciative that we have reached common ground with CFA that will end the strike immediately,” García said in a statement. “The agreement enables the CSU to fairly compensate its valued, world-class faculty while protecting the university system’s long-term financial sustainability.”

The deal includes a 5% salary boost for all faculty retroactive to July 1 of last year. All faculty will earn a 5% salary increase this summer on July 1, although that raise is contingent upon the CSU not losing money due to cuts in the California budget. The tentative agreement will also, on July 1 of this year, raise the pay floor by $3,000 and $6,000 for faculty in the two lowest-paid tiers of the salary range.

Although faculty were previously adamant about receiving 12% raises, they settled for smaller raises in exchange for other commitments from CSU. Those include raising the parental leave allowance from six to 10 weeks, guaranteeing union representation for faculty when interacting with campus police, improving access to lactation spaces and gender-inclusive restrooms and providing support for lecturer engagement in service work.

Finally, the deal would extend the existing contract for one year to the end of June 2025.

On Monday, roughly 75 people walked the picket line outside Sacramento State, flanking the campus’ J Street entrance. The banners welcoming students back from break were covered with union-made signs that read, “Classes don’t start without us!” and “On strike! California Faculty Association.”

The CFA, which represents 29,000 members, and university negotiators have spent nearly nine months haggling over salaries and other provisions as part of contract negotiation re-opener. Those non-salary demands include increased parental leave, greater access to gender-inclusive restrooms in campus buildings and more staff mental health counselors to help students. After the two sides hit an impasse in August, they engaged in mediation sessions with a third-party negotiator and then submitted to fact-finding with a neutral panelist.

Talks broke down two weeks ago when the CSU left the bargaining table after, as the university puts it, CFA “indicated no willingness” to depart from its ask for a 12% raise, according to a Jan. 11 letter from Joseph Jelincic, the system’s vice chancellor of collective bargaining. CSU officials then imposed parts of its “last, best and final offer” on the faculty unions, including a 5% salary increase, higher pay differentials for department chairs and a provision that allows for an increase in parking fees (up to $2 per month).

Members will have the opportunity to ratify the contract in the coming weeks, according to the CFA website.

The strike came as a new semester began at CSU campuses for many of the system’s 450,000 students amid a wave of union momentum in higher education created by the 2022 monthlong strike at the University of California system. Teaching assistants and graduate student workers disrupted classes across UC campuses as the fall semester concluded.

The CSU has advised students to look for messages from their instructors about updated class schedules.

Librarian Melissa Cardenas-Dow said a salary boost would help her pay off the more than $300,000 in student loan debt that she owes for her two master’s degrees — one in library and information science, the other in assistive technology studies. Before joining Sacramento State in 2017, Cardenas-Dow worked as a temporary librarian at numerous schools in Southern California. Although she received tenure last year, she empathizes with lecturers and non-tenured faculty who piece together a living by teaching at multiple institutions.

“I know what that’s like,” Cardenas-Dow said. “And we do have a term for that type of lifestyle: You’re a ‘freeway flyer,’ because you travel just to put together an income.”

Cardenas-Dow came out to the one-day December strike, but she said this week’s action were different.

“We’re showing that this is about Sac State,” she said. “Last time, it was about the system. This time, it’s about Sac State.”