Faculty to Fight Plan for CSUN Cutbacks : Education: Angry professors fear that President Blenda J. Wilson will force the school’s first-ever layoffs of tenured instructors by eliminating academic programs.

Increasingly angry Cal State Northridge faculty members are digging in their heels to resist budget cuts they expect will include the school’s first-ever layoffs of tenured faculty members.

CSUN faculty union President Will Forthman said Wednesday that he and his colleagues fear that school President Blenda J. Wilson will eliminate academic programs to balance the budget in the coming school year, bypassing established procedures that call for part-time teachers to be laid off before tenured instructors.

Wilson said earlier this month that layoffs at CSUN are probable because of the continuing reductions in state funding for higher education. During the fall and spring semesters this year, more than 1,000 classes at CSUN were canceled because of the state budget troubles.

“Our view is that we want to avoid layoffs, which is not the president’s view,” said Forthman, a philosophy professor. He has asked faculty members to resign from the budget committees created by Wilson to recommend ways of reducing campus spending for the coming school year.

Meanwhile, the Faculty Senate is expected to oppose layoffs of tenured and tenure-track professors, arguing that part-time instructors should go first.

Wilson, who has enjoyed a honeymoon period with the faculty since taking over the Northridge campus in September, is scheduled to speak to the Faculty Senate on the budget issue today.

Under Wilson’s plan of “vertical” budget cuts--which will be deeper in some academic departments than others--some part-time instructors would be spared at the expense of tenured and tenure-track professors, faculty members complain.

Wilson said last month she would not seek across-the-board cuts to meet an anticipated 5% decrease in state funds for the 20-campus California State University system.

The campus committees on reducing expenses are expected to decide on proposals such as consolidating or reducing departments.

Wilson said Wednesday she will wait for the committee recommendations before deciding on layoffs. She is the final authority on whose job will be cut. Until then, she said, nervous talk and uncertainty among the faculty are understandable but cannot be avoided.

She does not want to say that some departments or areas will be exempt from cutbacks because “I do not want to make a commitment that I cannot live up to,” Wilson said.

The office of the CSU chancellor, in charge of all Cal State campuses, has set a March 5 deadline for individual schools to submit the approximate number of layoffs anticipated for the 1993-94 school year.

Faculty collective bargaining agreements require that tenured faculty be given 120 days notice for layoffs prompted by funding shortfalls, which means that such decisions must be made final by the end of April, CSU spokeswoman Colleen Bentley-Adler said.

Within academic departments, layoffs are based on seniority. But if whole academic departments are eliminated, as the faculty fears will happen at CSUN, then tenured professors in one discipline may find their jobs eliminated, while part-time instructors in other departments will keep theirs.

Some CSUN faculty members, such as history professor Jane Bayes, say they are becoming skeptical of Wilson’s intentions, especially because Northridge and San Diego State are the only two CSU campuses so far to notify unions that they are considering layoffs for the fall semester.

“The concern of the faculty is whether the president is being straight with us: Is the money available and is the consultation with faculty real or just a sham?” Bayes asked.

Bayes and other faculty members have complained that the meetings of some of the committees, which deal with campus administration, are closed to observers.

Bayes and others say they believe the only way to determine whether there is enough money to avoid layoffs is to make public all of the budget committees’ meetings, especially those dealing with departments other than academic affairs--such as administration and plant management--to observe what economies the other departments are instituting.