Bargaining for Full Contract Begins with Ground Rules Negotiations

The CFA Bargaining Team met with CSU management on March 28. At management’s insistence, we were compelled to negotiate ground rules.

CFA President Charles Toombs set the stage for bargaining. “We are here to fight for the strongest, quality higher education for our students and to do that we need the best working conditions for faculty,” said Toombs.

Management’s interest in ground rules intends to limit member participation in open bargaining. They decided that they would rather pass a proposal by email than be in the room and discuss it with members present. Their proposal was intended to limit members’ ability to observe bargaining. You can read their proposal here. Ironically, management proposed barring the use of A.I. during negotiations while they push A.I. onto our campuses and into our classrooms.

Our Bargaining Team, however, held strong and collectively decided that we would not back down. The team made it clear that we are committed to democracy, transparency, openness, and accessibility. That is what it means to practice anti-racism and social justice unionism. Our response made that clear: bargaining would remain open for our members. Both parties agreed, however, that A.I. does not belong in our bargaining sessions.

We left the day with continued management intransigence around member participation in their response and our continued commitment to bargaining being open to CFA members.

CFA does not have a history of ground rules with management. There are also no examples of requiring other bargaining units in the CSU, such as CSUEU or Teamsters, to agree to ground rules. Indeed, CFA has bargained in a number of ways including on campuses with observers or on Zoom, like we have since 2020.

Stay up to date on bargaining at cfabargaining.org and be ready for future emails on upcoming opportunities to get involved with bargaining.