Voting Continues to Ratify the Next CFA Contract for All Faculty

As members continue to turn out in high numbers to vote on the CFA Tentative Agreement, CSU Trustees officially ratified our next contract.

The CSU Board of Trustees unanimously voted on Tuesday to accept the Tentative Agreement, a contract for all of us.

While CFA’s Board of Directors recommended in favor of ratifying the agreement, before a contract is official, CFA members have their say.

Ratification voting on the CFA Tentative Agreement continues through noon on February 2. Results will be announced the next morning.

Members still have a few chances to attend all-faculty informational bargaining meetings, with one scheduled for tonight at 5pm and an additional meeting scheduled for Thursday, January 27 at 1pm. If you would like to attend, you can register here.

This moment is a long time coming.

Bargaining began nearly two years ago. CFA declared impasse in late September. Movement stalled at the table until faculty took action on the campuses and in Long Beach.

Thousands of faculty members signed petitions to their campus presidents to demand a fair contract in early November. Then, on November 9, we rallied outside of the Board of Trustees. In the following weeks, members kept the pressure on Chancellor Joseph Castro during his campus visits.

Following these faculty actions, the CSU asked us to come back to the table, and we saw the most significant movement we had seen throughout the entire bargaining process.

CFA members and the CSU were scheduled to present their cases for factfinding in the first week of January, but this step was averted when we reached a Tentative Agreement in late December.

The Tentative Agreement, succeeding our 2014-2021 Collective Bargaining Agreement, will deliver much needed pay raises, and will avoid the possibility of a strike this spring.

The CFA Bargaining Team and CFA Board of Directors recommend a “yes” vote on the Agreement. 

Sharmin Khan, CFA San José lecturer representative and a member of the CFA Board of Directors, voted yes on ratifying the Tentative Agreement.

“We got a lot of what we asked for. Not everything, but a lot,” said Khan. “Most importantly, we got significant salary increases and COVID-19-related payment, an easier path to range elevation for lecturer faculty, and a pathway to reclassification for qualified lecturer faculty. It took us over 20 months (or longer) to reach an agreement with CSU management. I am not willing to wait another 20 months while we negotiate another contract agreement.

“The alternative to not ratifying this would be to go back to bargaining, factfinding, and organizing for a possible strike. But that is not without cost – cost to our students, our faculty, and our staff. Bargaining, by definition, means to negotiate terms and conditions. It means you give some, you take some. It doesn’t mean you get everything you asked for.”

If the contract is ratified, members can expect to see the following:

Retroactive pay raises, and one-time payments could appear as early as the March 1 paycheck. This includes the initial 4% General Salary Increase (GSI) for all faculty members, the first 2.65% Service Salary Increase (SSI) for eligible faculty members, and the $3,500 COVID Service Award for all faculty members (prorated, based on full-time time base).

The second GSI of 4% is expected on July 1 of this year.

Faculty members should expect to see salary increases totaling 8% to 10.65% by July 1, 2022, and lump-sum payments for retroactive salary increases and the $3,500 COVID Service Award. Post Promotion Increases (PPI) for eligible faculty members and a second SSI are on deck for 2023 and 2024, respectively.

With this Tentative Agreement, faculty members won three years of an expanded range elevation program for lecturer and librarian faculty, allowing for range elevation without needing to max out in range first. Coaches have stronger contract language on their eligibility to receive multi-year contracts. Librarian and counseling faculty won much deserved remote work opportunities. Our lecturers now have two ways to secure a pathway to tenure-track employment at the CSU.  

Our members also won significant gains in anti-racism and social justice initiatives in the contract, including an increase to the number of exceptional service awards for faculty who assist and mentor the diverse student body of the CSU along with the recognition of cultural taxation that comes with the work and is born on the backs of women, BIPOC faculty, and LGBTQIA+ faculty.

We also gained contract terms providing faculty the right to address and rebut bias in students’ evaluations that must be considered in faculty evaluations and reviews. Further, the TA includes caste in categories protected from discrimination. We agreed to joint labor-management workgroups to pursue longer-term contracts for contingent faculty, to develop a possible professor of practice/teaching tenure classification and additional classifications for faculty work outside of or in addition to Academic Year appointments, and to consider ways to support working parents including improved parental leave. At the Chancellor’s invitation, members of the bargaining team, along with students, will meet to explore alternatives to police on our campuses.

This is a contract for all of us and applies to all of us — coaches, counselors, lecturers, librarians, and tenure-line faculty members.

Still have questions about the Tentative Agreement? Read FAQs and see the tracked-changes Tentative Agreement on our website.

Voting is open to dues-paying members of CFA. Know faculty who are not members? They can join CFA and vote on this Tentative Agreement.