CFA Members Overwhelmingly Ratify Contract, Unified in Anti-Racism and Social Justice Expansions

A new year, a new contract, and more reasons to celebrate.

CFA members overwhelmingly voted in favor of ratifying the Tentative Agreement with the CSU. In total, 95% of members who voted said yes to our new deal.

In addition, we had our highest voter turnout of the past decade – perhaps ever.

“This was the first time in CFA history that bargaining negotiations were grounded in and moved forward from an anti-racism and social justice lens. This was also the first time that we bargained during a global pandemic, and I am extremely proud of our accomplishments,” CFA President Charles Toombs said during a press conference announcing ratification results last Thursday. “I am extremely proud of my colleagues on all 23 campuses who, during this pandemic, never missed a beat in providing the highest level of instruction and support services to ensure students succeed and graduate.

“My colleagues on all 23 campuses strongly supported the bargaining team throughout the two-year process. They turned out and showed up to let the CSU administration know that this contract mattered. Thank you so much.”

As a union family, as colleagues, members showed their unity for this contract for all of us and in breaking down the barriers of systemic injustices.

This new contract and our vote show that faculty can win pay raises and address issues of anti-racism and social justice at the same time.

“The ratification of this contract came to be because, we as a CFA collective, fought to ensure that there was a win for everyone – and that it be done so from an anti-racist and social justice frame. No one was left out,” CFA Associate Vice President, North, Margarita Berta-Ávila said in Thursday’s press conference.

Salary increases – General Salary Increases (GSI), Service Salary Increases (SSI), and Post Promotion Increases (PPI) – mean so much more to our members, addressing need with immediate increases, as well as a $3,500 COVID Service Award, which acknowledges the tremendous amount of uncompensated labor heaped onto faculty during the early phase of the pandemic. And we will reopen salary negotiations next year to further address salary equity and inflation.

“The ratification of this contract came to be because, we as a CFA collective, fought to ensure that there was a win for everyone – and that it be done so from an anti-racist and social justice frame. No one was left out,”

MARGARITA BERTA-ÁVILA, CFA Associate Vice President, North.

The anti-racism and social justice provisions in our new contract are powerful. We took a number of steps to accomplish this, including increasing exceptional service awards and naming “cultural taxation” as a workload problem faced by faculty whose social identities include women and/or Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), and/or LGBTQIA+. We also now have the explicit ability to rebut bias in evaluations and have protection from being discriminated on the basis of caste.

Lecturers deserve the increased rights and respect gained in this contract, including expanded range elevation. We secured three years of expanded eligibility to many more lecturer and librarian faculty who were shut out of the program in the past.

“For lecturers who make up the vast majority of contingent faculty in the CSU, we worked very hard to build on past CFA wins to strengthen job security and improve lecturer compensation,” said CFA Associate Vice President – Lecturers – North, Meghan O’Donnell during Thursday’s press conference. “The range elevation program expands eligibility to 50 times more contingent faculty than those who were eligible under an older/broken process of range elevation that the CSU had used previously.”

Counselor and librarian working conditions will improve with this contract through new terms for teleworking. Our faculty knew it was time to modernize and allow these important services to happen on and off campus locations, and we’ve seen it work for the last two years.

Coaches now have more stable job security with the opportunity for multi-year contracts, instead of being on year-to-year contracts for decades.  

This truly is a contract for us all. And these provisions will make a difference collectively and individually.

“We are not done. Be it at the campus level, statewide, and even the Capitol, we will ensure that the contract is adhered to,” said Berta-Ávila. “That our wins are built upon to address the specific needs of one another and our collective communities we are in.”