Your CFA Executive Board would like to update faculty on developments in contract bargaining. We would like to move “beyond the headlines” and provide some analysis of the current contract bargaining situation.

Where were we?

CFA’s contract with the CSU expired last year. CFA offered to continue under the current contract but that offer was rejected out of hand by the Chancellor’s Office (CO) citing “operational needs,” a vague term that the CO uses to indicate that they intend to wring concessions out of the faculty. Predictably the Chancellor’s bargaining team sought a series of “take backs” that would rob faculty of job security, undermine shared governance, and deprive faculty of due process rights. The Chancellor’s bargaining team also signaled that they intend to seek future take backs on salary and benefits.

On November 17th faculty at Dominguez Hills and East Bay engaged in a concerted action over pay adjustments negotiated in the last contract that were not honored by the Chancellor’s Office.

While the Chancellor and the Board of Trustees were raising fees and tuition on students and implicitly threatening the salary, benefits, and job security of faculty the Chancellor set as his number one policy goal increasing the pay of CSU campus presidents.

Where are we now?

In November CFA declared an impasse (see below) when the Chancellor’s bargaining team made its last offer, which included one additional take-back: to remove the cap on parking rates for faculty. At that point the CFA bargaining team concluded that the Chancellor’s negotiation team was not serious about reaching an agreement. In January the mediation process began.

Our analysis. Mediation rarely produces results. It is likely that fact finding will begin shortly. The Chancellor’s office is O-for-three during the last three rounds of fact finding. In all cases the fact finders found for CFA and the Chancellor subsequently imposed his terms on faculty. Chances are that the Chancellor’s bargaining team will seem to “run out the clock” by extending mediation and fact finding as far into the Spring Semester as possible, or even push it into the Summer. They will likely try to take advantage of the fact that faculty are off contract and less organized during the summer.

What can I do? For this reason CFA is encouraging local chapters form a strike committee to organize faculty and prepare faculty for a possible strike. The CI Executive Board is soliciting volunteers for the strike committee. If you are interested in volunteering please contact us.

What is at stake?

There are a number of critical differences between CFA and the Chancellor’s Office.  These are just a few. In the table below we  summarize what we think are the most substantively important differences between the two sides. We also discuss what we think the Chancellor’s position “really means” for faculty.

CFAs Position	Chancellor’s Offer	What the Chancellor Really Means
Recognizing the difficult fiscal environment, a one-percent pay increase in each year of the contract, and implementation of increases agreed to in the previous contract.	Zero general salary increase. In 2012-13 and 2013-14 CSU or CFA can reopen Article 31 (salary) or Article 32 (benefits)	Faculty get nothing now and might get less later. The Chancellor can argue that the “reopeners” allow for pay increases, but there is no reason to believe that reopening Articles 31 and 32 can lead to anything but requests for salary and benefits concessions (cuts) in those years. Recognizing the difficult fiscal environment the Chancellor is seeking to wring concessions out of the faculty.
Maintain the right of lecturer faculty to three year contracts.	Take away the right to a three-year appointment after six years of continuous, satisfactory service to the CSU. Three year appointments will be at the campus presidents’ discretion.	The Chancellor and campus presidents can take advantage of a weak labor market to further outsource instruction to the “lowest bidder.” It is worth noting that the current leadership at Channel Islands is committed to continuing to offer three year contracts. But without this protection a turnover in our leadership could lead to the exploitation of lecturer faculty.
Maintain tenure and order of appointment.	Add a loophole to create a generous “exception” to the order of layoff rules. If successful, a president could ignore seniority even for tenured faculty if the faculty member did not possess the appropriate specialty in the president’s opinion.	Campus president’s can ignore tenure and orders of appointment and layoff faculty based on what they perceive as being appropriate specialties based on their opinion.
Student Evaluations: Status Quo. Minimum of two evaluations per year, more at the discretion of faculty and programs.	Transfer responsibility for determining evaluations to the campus president; require that all classes be evaluated unless the president mandates fewer.	Administration knows better than faculty and programs which courses should be evaluated. Faculty should not be trusted to make these decisions. Power should be concentrated in the office of the campus presidents. Shared governance is so last century.
Sabbaticals: Status Quo. Faculty have an equal hand in determining sabbaticals.	Give campus presidents more flexibility to overturn the decisions made by sabbatical committees.	Power over decisions must be concentrated in the administrative apparatus of the campuses. We want to undermine shared governance and this is one of the ways we are trying to do it.

Save the Date!

On February 16th from 4 to 6 PM CFA will host an open bar happy hour at Brendan’s Irish Pub in Camarillo. Get together with other faculty and learn a bit more about bargaining. Brendan’s is located at 1755 East Daily Drive in Camarillo.

Save (another) Date!

April 13th CI-CFA is hosting author Benjamin Ginsburg author of the recent book The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters. CI-CFA will make subsidized copies of the book available to faculty. Watch your mailbox for more details.