Sacramento State faculty plan to join 5-day strike across California State University system

Faculty and maintenance staff across most of the 23 California State University campuses will likely welcome the new term with a picket line next week.

As their students gear up to return to class, thousands of faculty members and hundreds of skilled trades workers across the nation’s largest university system plan to shut their campuses down with a week-long strike.

Student services at Sacramento State, including campus housing, libraries, the student union, academic advising and others will operate as usual, according to the university’s website. Students should communicate with their professors about whether classes will be held.

The weeklong, system-wide strike follows months of negotiations over salaries and other contract provisions, such as increased parental leave, greater access to gender-inclusive restrooms in campus buildings and more staff mental health counselors to help students.

The California Faculty Association, which represents 29,000 members, and the university hit an impasse in August after four months of bargaining. The parties engaged in mediation talks with a third-party negotiator and then submitted to fact-finding with a neutral panelist. They will be joined on the picket lines by members of Teamsters Local 2010, which represents about 1,100 skilled trade workers across the CSU system.

The faculty union, whose members include CSU professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches, staged a series of one-day work stoppages last month at campuses in Pomona, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento. The two sides reconvened Jan. 8 and 9 in the hopes of reaching an agreement. But according to CFA, the university system dismissed the union’s scaled-back proposals and instead threatened faculty members with layoffs.

“After 20 minutes, the CSU management bargaining team threatened systemwide layoffs, walked out of bargaining, cancelled all remaining negotiations, then imposed a last, best and final offer on CFA members,” wrote CFA last week in a post on its website. “Rather than bargain in good faith with CFA members, CSU management expressed nothing but disdain for faculty.”

The “last, best and final offer” that the CSU imposed on faculty includes a 5% general salary increase, a doubling of the bonus given to departmental chairpersons (from $80 to $160 for smaller departments and $120 to $140 for larger departments), and a provision to increase parking fees by up to $2 per month.

Because the CFA “indicated no willingness” to depart from its ask for a 12% raise, according to a Jan. 11 letter from Joseph Jelincic, the CSU’s vice chancellor of collective bargaining, “the University had no choice but to use the imposition process to provide our well-deserving faculty a 5 percent salary increase.”

“The state-appointed neutral factfinder agreed that 12% is not financially viable for the CSU,” wrote Hazel Kelly, CSU spokesperson, in a written statement Friday morning in response to CFA’s comments. “It would lead to significant cuts to student programs and layoffs on our campuses. CSU offered multiple salary proposals and announced it would agree to nearly all of the factfinder’s recommendations.”

Kelly also emphasized that the CSU “stands ready to return to the bargaining table to negotiate a lasting agreement.”

That’s what happened Saturday when CSU announced a tentative agreement with Teamsters Local 2010, a different bargaining group representing 1,100 skilled trades employees, on a three-year contract.

Under the deal, which was expected to be disclosed later but needs to be approved by its members at 22 of the system’s 23 schools, Teamsters were expected to not participate in the strike.

CFA leadership, meanwhile, has criticized the CSU for focusing too narrowly on the salary issue.

“They have completely ignored the issues of workload, health and safety concerns, and parental leave,” said Chris Cox, a lecturer at San Jose State and CFA’s associate vice president for racial and social justice on the northern campuses. “Management wouldn’t even consider our proposals for appropriate class sizes, proper lactation spaces for nursing parents, gender inclusive bathroom spaces and a clear delineation of our rights when interacting with campus authorities.”

University officials say classes will not be canceled.

“All CSU campuses will remain open during a strike to serve students. Arrangements have been made to maintain university operations and minimize disruptions to ensure the strike poses no hardship on our students,” wrote Kelly on Thursday in a separate emailed statement. “The CSU is not canceling classes and many classes will still be held as not all faculty will participate in the strike.”

The university encourages students to check their class portals or contact each of their professors if they have questions about whether classes will be held as normal. Kelly wrote that the CSU does not anticipate the strike will harm students’ ability to complete courses or graduate on time.