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| Source: Bold Type Magazine |
Beginning April 13th, members of the California Faculty Association, plan to go on strike for a 5% raise in salary. The California Faculty Association union represents about 26,000 California State University (CSU) employees from all 23 CSU campuses. The union believes they are vastly underpaid while at the same time, the CSU system is not lacking the funds to support a 5% raise in pay.
This debate and negotiation for increased pay has been going on between the Board of Trustees of the CSU system and the union for the past year; however, a recent independent report found that the requested 5% raised by the union is not impossible for the administration to implement. Historically, the last time CSU faculty have received a salary increase of over 5% was during the 2007-08 educational year when their salary increase was at 5.7%. The Board of Trustees is offering a pay increase of only 2%.
The report states that a salary raise of 5% is “in the interest of students, who need caring faculty and certainly in the public interest as our country needs a well educated population.”
This strike would mean that faculty will not be teaching from Wednesday April 13th until Tuesday April 19th. Missing five class days will largely affect students’ education. Even with this, the 260,000 students in the CSU system will not be receiving a refund on tuition or an excused absence from classes where professors decide to continue teaching.
Questions:
Do you think the faculty should accept the 2% pay raise or continue fighting for 5%?
What are some projects the money could come from?
Sources:
http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/CSU-needs-to-avoid-April-13-strike-7223245.php
http://boldtypemag.com/btm/the-first-csu-system-wide-strike-is-about-to-shut-down-all-23-campuses-heres-why
