CSUN Instructors Stage Protest Between Classes

Cal State Northridge professors’ union staged an informational picket Wednesday, calling for better pay, benefits and good-faith contract negotiations.

Some 40 members of the California Faculty Assn. held signs aloft, yelled into a bullhorn and walked in a circle on the campus quadrangle as folk music blared from a boom box.

The demonstration was one of several played out on the 22 campuses of the California State University on Tuesday and Wednesday to pressure CSU Chancellor Charles Reed and the board of trustees back to the bargaining table.

At CSUN, the two-hour protest did not interrupt classes. Faculty members walked the picket line during free periods and were replaced by colleagues when they were required to be in class.

Dressed in black to demonstrate the seriousness of the contract impasse, union members carried signs with such slogans as “We want fairness and respect,” “Chancellor Reed made me a unionist” and “Will teach for food.”

“We are here to send the message that we need to have good-faith negotiations and be treated with fairness and respect,” said Edda Spielmann, president of the union’s CSUN chapter.

“We believe the faculty should be rewarded based on their performance and the union believes all faculty should receive the same,” said Ken Swisher, a spokesman for the chancellor’s office.

The union represents full- and part-time and permanent and temporary instructors, librarians, counselors, coaches and department chairmen--all of whom have been working without a new contract since July 1, Spielmann said.

Union members contend that administration officials have been unwilling to budge on several wage and benefits issues, Spielmann said.

CSUN faculty say they are paid 11.2% less than their colleagues at comparable state universities across the nation.

Swisher said administration officials dispute the 11.2% pay gap. CSU is offering a 5% pay raise this year and 6% raise next for a total of 11% over two years.

Union officials also disagree with the administration’s merit pay system, which is based on performance.

But Swisher counters, “There has been a call for accountability in higher education. A system without a merit pay program is like a professor giving all his or her students an A regardless of how they perform.”

Union representatives also want administration officials to extend health benefits to long-term, part-time faculty; to discuss extending health benefits for domestic partners; to maintain an existing early retirement program, and to give counselors parity with faculty members on salary and other work issues.

Negotiations stalled after a mediator was unable to come up with a contract acceptable to both sides, Spielmann said.

The dispute will now be heard by a fact-finding committee. The three-member panel will include a union representative, an administration representative and a neutral party agreed upon by both sides or named by the Public Employees’ Relations Board, Spielmann said.

“The administration wants to make us out as some disgruntled fringe group,” she said. “But we represent the entire faculty.”

A survey of CSUN students conducted by the union revealed that some 68% of students would support a faculty strike if it came to that, said Jim Smith, communications director for the California Faculty Assn.

Michael Darvish, a senior history major, seemed to be among those student supporters.

“When they give a raise to the president, they should give it to others as well,” he said. “It’s fairness in the system.”

In Orange County, a tag team of Fullerton professors, never more than 12 at a time, also protested in between classes to avoid disrupting students’ education, they said.

Fullerton faculty passed out blue informational fliers to students and campus staff. Free peanuts and stickers also were doled out to generate support signatures on a petition to be sent to Reed.

“They totally should get better pay raises,” said Madusta Smith, a Fullerton junior who signed the faculty petition. “They put in a lot of hours after school to be there for us. It’s really sad that they have to be out here to fight for a raise.”

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Times staff writer Tina Nguyen contributed to this story.