Faculty Rights Tip: Personal Holiday

As faculty, we know that we are not only teaching, counseling, and coaching students, but also trying to improve our communities, challenge injustice, and keep our local and transnational families healthy, educated, and nurtured. As we inch toward the Fall and Winter holidays, it is useful to know about our personal holiday, as guaranteed in our Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).

This provision entitles every faculty member to one personal holiday each calendar year. If you are feeling the need to take a day for self-care, community organizing, protest, or family time – or any personal reason at all including an upcoming holiday you may observe – take the day!  If you don’t use your annual personal day before December 31, you lose it.

Article 33.3 of our faculty contract states:

“A faculty unit employee shall be entitled to a Personal Holiday, which may be taken on one (1) day during the calendar year. If the faculty unit employee fails to take the Personal Holiday before the end of the calendar year, the holiday shall be forfeited. CSU and CFA shall endeavor to inform a new faculty unit employee of his/her Personal Holiday. Scheduling of the Personal Holiday shall be by mutual agreement of the faculty unit employee and the appropriate administrator.”

Even if you feel that taking a personal day just means the work on your plate will just be there the day you return from your personal holiday, it is vital that we exercise the rights inked into our CBA, lest the CSU managers – as they often do – try to whittle them away. As Tricia Hersey of the Nap Ministry argues, “rest is resistance,” and your union invites you to take your day, rest, and resist the grind – for at least one day per year.

Want to learn more? Become active with your local CFA chapter Faculty Rights team. Find your representative here.

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