Members Come Together to Combat Austerity, Free Speech Repression

CFA delegates and members across the state met in Los Angeles last weekend at the 99th Assembly preparing for upcoming efforts to Liberate the CSU.

They passed a bylaws change to expand the Bargaining Team and resolutions to protect faculty jobs, heard from a fellow member running for Assembly about the importance of voting by November 5, and learned how debt financing de-prioritizes student servingness at universities.

President Charles Toombs reviewed our Liberate the CSU plan to combat management’s attacks on faculty, students, and staff freedom of speech; the rollout of manufactured austerity measures that cut jobs, trim courses, increase workloads, and reduce learning and support programs for students; and efforts to privatize public higher education while saddling students with loan debt.

“There’s a lot that we need to do to continue our work as lecturers, professors, coaches, counselors, librarians to protect academic freedom from attacks from across the country and at the CSU. We need to be the ones – not the deans or the campus administrators or the Chancellor’s Office — to define what higher education is and ensure that it remains steadfast,” said Toombs, a San Diego State Professor. “We’re going to continue to deliver quality education, and we’re not going to let the new chancellor repress our free speech.”

Members approved a change to CFA Bylaws Article IX that expands the composition of the CFA Bargaining Team to include one representative elected from each of the 23 chapters. Inspired by a resolution from Spring Assembly, members will elect their chapter representatives by November 25 for next year’s Bargaining Team.

Members passed resolutions to:

• abolish the two-tier faculty labor system and work toward tenure for all
• add an article in our contract protecting academic freedom
• add an article in our contract governing the use of Artificial Intelligence
• fund jobs and education, not wars and occupation
• establish a strike fund for CFA members

Resolutions will be posted to our resolutions page once language has been finalized by their authors.

CFA San Diego member LaShae Sharp-Collins spoke about her campaign for State Assembly District 79 and the importance of union members volunteering and voting in the upcoming November 5 General Election.

Sharp-Collins said she was inspired to run for office to continue her public service and to ensure workers’ voices are heard at the Capital.

“I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for unions and what we do to help us prevail.

I am union. I am the union. As I reflect on the mission of CFA, it’s to do everything in our power to continue to improve upon the greatest education system in the U.S.,” Sharp-Collins said. “I’m running to get what’s right and just for us at the state level, make sure workers are being treated with respect, fairness, and dignity.”

Sharp-Collins’s goals for office include criminal justice reform, increasing resources for social services, strengthening mental health counseling, honoring diversity of cultures, rebuilding the middle class, and promoting and rebuilding generational wealth.

“If we don’t get things right for the generations coming after us, then what the hell are we doing?,” she asked the group.

Assembly delegates heard from Dr. María del Mar Rosa Rodríguez and Jason Wozniak, authors of “Lend and Rule,” who spoke about the enormous consequences of debt for higher education.

There’s student debt, which is disproportionately carried by women and people of color. But there’s also university institutional debt, which has ballooned over the last decade.

“The CSU carries $9.6 billion in debt, which costs about $700 million a year,” Wozniak, a professor at West Chester University and researcher and organizer with Debt Collective. “Some of this originates from state divestment from public education. … Nowadays, student tuition acts as collateral for university debt. Universities are not islands. This is the result of neoliberal policy and politics. Higher education is a public service that used to be paid for by the state – now it’s funded by debt. We don’t have a spending problem – we have a revenue problem that drives institutions and people into debt.”

Because university administrators are responding to debt and their creditors, they are not responding to students or their communities. When you prioritize a good credit rating, you’re constantly working on your brand and you make sure your board is stacked with businesspeople, Wozniak said.

Rosa Rodríguez reviewed her time organizing University of Puerto Rico faculty against austerity cuts. She urged faculty to fight capitalism and dismantle the debt economy: “your universities are the ideal places to launch that fight.”

“The efforts at austerity and dismantling higher education to answer an insurmountable debt fail in their service to the people,” said Rosa Rodríguez, associate professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey and President of the university’s faculty union, Asociación Puertorriqueña de Profesores Universitarios.

While developing campaigns against austerity cutbacks, Rosa Rodríguez urged CFA members to “connect all larger issues. Debt is a union issue, women’s rights is a union issue, racism is a union issue, genocide is a union issue.”

Also at Assembly, members launched the Community Wellbeing Toolkit. The resource is part of our efforts to reimagine safety on CSU campuses by transforming the approach to safety and security in ways that address racism and bias, excessive violent use of force, and the experiences of faculty and students from marginalized backgrounds. We want to center the wellbeing of people and create campuses that are truly safe, inclusive, and supportive.

Members also elected CFA Long Beach member and CSU Long Beach Professor Gary Hytrek and CFA Northridge member and CSU Northridge Professor Teresa Montaño to the Political Action & Legislative Committee.

Also at Assembly, the following members were appointed:

• to the Health and Retirement Benefits Committee: Kevin Wehr, CFA Bargaining Chair and Sacramento State Professor.
• to the Contract Development & Bargaining Strategy Committee, Lecturers Representatives: Barbara Olave, CFA Stanislaus Lecturers Representative and CSU Stanislaus Lecturer, and Jonathan Caravello, CFA Channel Islands Vice President and CSU Channel Islands Lecturer.

Assembly attendees also remembered members who have recently passed: Dr. Boris Ricks, “El Profe” Armando Vázquez-Ramos, Rev. James Lawson, Jr.