Cal State, faculty reach deal

The faculty union and the Cal State University system announced a tentative settlement Tuesday in their long simmering contract dispute, boosting professors’ pay by at least 20.7% over four years and averting threatened walkouts at the 23 campuses across the state.

Both sides predicted that the new contract would be ratified over the next few weeks and that labor peace would be restored to the nation’s largest four-year university system, which enrolls about 417,000 students.

“We didn’t get everything we wanted, but we got close to everything we wanted,” said John Travis, the Humboldt State political science professor who is president of the California Faculty Assn.

His union had been planning a series of two-day rolling strikes starting next week but put those on hold pending what he said was the high likelihood of contract approval.

Charles B. Reed, chancellor of the Cal State system, said he was pleased with the agreement and expected the university’s Board of Trustees to approve it.

“I hope this contract will be good for everybody, and we will put this behind us and go forward,” Reed said.

The labor standoff had been getting unusually heated for academia. Cal State trustees had complained that union activists were vilifying Reed and were frightening students with the strike threat. The faculty, on the other hand, were furious about what they saw as wildly overgenerous and secretive perks for executives.

The new contract calls for the 24,000 professors, librarians, counselors and coaches to receive raises that would total 20.7%, in phases retroactive to July 2006 and through 2010. Then, various groups of them will get additional raises, based on merit, seniority and new steps created in their pay ladders.

As a result, the typical faculty member will wind up with a total of 23% to 25%, although some might receive more than a 31% raise over the four years, according to the union.

Plus, the administration and the faculty said they would ask the Legislature to add 1% for each of the next three years.

Lecturers, who teach a large portion of Cal State classes, would see their average annual pay rise in two categories to about $54,000 and $66,222 if they can find a full load of teaching. Average salaries for assistant and associate professors on the tenure track would rise to $90,749 and for full professors to $105,465, according to the university.

Reed said that the recently approved 10% hike in student fees for next year was necessary to help fund the contract, which he estimated would cost about $400 million over four years. But he said no spending cuts would be required.

“It will be hard, but it will be financially feasible,” he said. (The faculty union contends that those annual fee hikes, a $252 increase for full-time undergraduates, are not needed.)

The settlement would help close the gap between Cal State salaries and those at comparable universities around the country, negotiators said. The California Postsecondary Education Commission projected that Cal State faculty pay will lag about 18% behind those other schools this year.

Faculty union vice president Lillian Taiz, a Cal State L.A. history professor, said Tuesday that the previous pay scale and the high cost of housing in California made it difficult to attract and retain talented junior faculty from around the nation.

The last faculty contract expired in June 2005 and was extended monthly until talks stalled and the required fact-finding by a neutral third party began.

The long standoff was broken March 25 when the two sides agreed to negotiate for 10 more days in response to the fact-finder’s report that recommended a series of pay raises totaling as much as 24.8% by 2010.

One of the other contentious issues was parking fees. The university wanted those fees for faculty to rise to those paid by students and administrators, but the union fought that and sought a new agency to build parking facilities and set fees. The contract follows the fact-finder’s plan to increase faculty parking fees by the same percentages as their general salary raises each year.

In Sacramento on Tuesday, the reaction in state government was relief. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement that he was “very pleased to see that both sides came together and put students’ needs first by preventing a faculty strike. This agreement benefits students, faculty and administrators and will continue to improve the excellence of the CSU system.”

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larry.gordon@latimes.com