Mercury News: California State University reaches contract agreement with faculty
LOS ANGELES — California State University has reached a tentative agreement on a four-year contract with its faculty that largely preserves current contract terms and calls for no salary raises, the university and faculty union said Tuesday.
“It’s a fair agreement in the context of hard times,” said Lillian Taiz, who heads the California Faculty Association, which represents 23,000 professors, lecturers and other professional employees. “We are disappointed we were not able to get a raise, but that wasn’t in the cards. It was a tough pill to swallow, I won’t kid you.”
The university agreed to possibly reopen salary talks for 2012-13 and 2013-14. Benefits were maintained at the current level.
Both sides said the agreement will allow them to put to rest more than two years of contentious negotiations and work together to push for more revenue for the 23-campus system that has seen $750 million in state funding cuts over the past four years.
The system is one of the largest public university systems in the nation with 400,000 students.
Faculty members have not had a raise for the past five years after the university failed to fulfill salary commitments in the last contract. Taiz said that issue has been set aside in the interest of collaborating with the university to push for more state funding.
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