Cal State announces tentative agreement on faculty contract

California State University announced Thursday that it has reached a tentative agreement with its faculty union on a three-year contract that restores pay increases and addresses workload concerns.

The agreement with the California Faculty Assn. provides a first-year 3% increase to the base compensation pool and includes a 1.6% salary increase for all faculty and additional increases for some temporary and tenure track faculty and lecturers.

Under the pact, the two sides can reopen salary and benefit talks for 2015-16 and 2016-17.

“The multi-year agreement is a tremendous accomplishment, as well as a special opportunity for CFA and CSU to continue to strengthen communication and collaboration as we work together to advance the mission of the university,” Chancellor Timothy P. White said in a statement.

“As we approach the next year with limited resources and increased expectations at state and federal levels for increased outcomes,” the statement continued, “we have this agreement as the foundation on which to build a bright future for our students who deserve the highest quality of education programs in the state.”

The faculty union represents more than 23,000 Cal State professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches.

In recent weeks, the faculty group had mounted peaceful demonstrations on several of the system’s 23 campuses to appeal for pay raises and a correction of uneven pay policies.

Those protests were tame compared with negotiations over the previous contract in 2012, when faculty conducted one-day strikes at two campuses, the first walkouts since the union was formed in 1983.

That contract, which expired on June 30, included no raises, amid concerns over state funding cuts and the budget crisis in Sacramento. After going five years without a raise, faculty won a 1.34% pay increase last year.

The new agreement will begin to improve a “distorted salary structure” that saw longtime staff making less than new hires, women in departments making $10,000 less than newly hired male colleagues and holders of doctorates struggling to get by on “embarrassingly low wages,” said faculty association President Lillian Taiz, a professor of history at Cal State L.A.

“We feel like it’s not nearly enough after seven years, but it is at least a beginning and will be welcome by faculty who haven’t had anything for so long,” Taiz said.

The agreement must still be ratified by the faculty union membership and the Board of Trustees.

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