California Budget Signed, Contract Wins Preserved

Governor Newsom signed the state’s main budget bill for 2024-25, Assembly Bill 107. The full details of the finalized budget can be found here.

We are glad to share that there are no cuts to the ongoing base budget of the CSU for 2024-25. Therefore our 2024-25 re-opener contract increases are preserved, including the 5-percent General Salary Increase for all faculty, effective July 1, 2024.

We anticipate the 2024-25 compensation increases to be posted soon, but not in time for July 1 pay warrants; there will be a retro payment to cover July and corrected salaries going forward. Read our Faculty Rights Tip on how to access your salary information and verify that your raise(s) are processed correctly. You can also check Cal Employee Connect to verify that you are receiving these payments.

Throughout the legislative budget process, the governor and our legislative allies have maintained that funding to the CSU is integral to California. CFA member activists and statewide officers regularly attended budget committee hearings and made our presence felt at Lobby Days to make sure that the governor and legislators understood that funding the CSU had to be a priority. We want to thank the governor and legislators for following through on their commitments to public higher education.

As you may have seen, though, there are significant cuts in the final budget to critical agencies and programs. Various cuts to public agencies and social services will imperil the most marginalized in the state. We are deeply concerned about how these cuts will impact historically marginalized communities; for example, reductions in funds devoted to affordable housing and delaying a minimum wage increase for about 426,000 healthcare workers. A proposal to grow Cal Grant by 137,000 students and a more modest proposal were both rejected.

In the governor’s May budget revise a significant cut of $510 million to ongoing funding was proposed for the Middle Class Scholarship Program, leaving only $100 million to keep the program going. This would have affected hundreds of thousands of students across both the CSU and University of California systems, especially undocumented students or students from mixed-status households, who often rely on these scholarships to obtain an education they might not receive otherwise. Our advocacy efforts helped legislators understand that they needed to preserve this important and necessary financial aid fund that helps drive CSU enrollment.

As part of our ongoing budget advocacy, we will continue to join with our union siblings to make sure that this and future budgets do not jeopardize the well-being of our most vulnerable residents and undermine the efforts of families and individuals to find a path out of poverty and thrive. CFA members will continue to demand and work to create a California that is equitable, inclusive, and just for everyone.