Help CFA Members Achieve Reasonable, Humane Parental Leave
CFA members cobble together a meager number of months through several leave programs to bond with newly birthed or adopted children. Some struggle to accumulate vacation and sick time and then use all that saved time to bond with their new child. Some are working on lesson plans from the delivery room. Some return to work mere days after having a new child.
All because of CSU management’s failure to provide a reasonable, competitive, and fair parental leave policy.
For more than two years, members have detailed the inhumanity of the CSU’s 30-day parental leave and advocated for a more reasonable policy that improves faculty health and student learning.
“What we know is that these decisions are among women and women of color. We’re not going to let up on this when we know it’s impacting our most precarious faculty. Having such short leave perpetuates a very patriarchal, racist structure.”
-Margarita Berta-Ávila
A full semester or term of paid parental leave would reflect today’s realities facing the system’s 29,000 coaching, counseling, librarian, and instructional faculty who are starting or expanding their families. It provides an equitable opportunity to care for family and have a balance between work and life. Expanding parental leave would improve the career advancement and would create greater equity for faculty who identify as women and/or non-binary, particularly those who also identify as faculty of color.
“The reason that we keep fighting is that this is an equity issue, an anti-racism, social justice issue in which we have faculty who are continually being marginalized and put into situations to make a choice as to whether they’re going to have a family or not, or made to feel they have to choose whether to move forward in their profession or not,” said Margarita Berta-Ávila, CFA vice president, Bargaining Team member, and member of CFA’s Parents and Caregivers Coalition. “What we know is that these decisions are among women and women of color. We’re not going to let up on this when we know it’s impacting our most precarious faculty. Having such short leave perpetuates a very patriarchal, racist structure.”
To help alleviate the stress, planning, financial strain, and disparate impact on women, non-binary, and faculty of color, CFA’s Bargaining Team proposed extending parental leave to one semester or two terms during our 2021 negotiations. CSU management fought our efforts, so the two sides set up a work group. We also re-upped our leave proposal during our current re-opener bargaining this year. At every turn, CSU management has said no.
CFA members simply do not have a willing partner bargaining in good faith. Which is why we’re sponsoring Assembly Bill 1123 to achieve a semester of paid parental leave for the birth, adoption, and/or fostering of a child.
Join CFA members in urging Newsom to sign AB 1123 so our faculty can have the time they need with their families.
The current policy is woefully inadequate and does not allow enough time for parent-child bonding and does not allow enough time to heal following childbirth. It is simply a health and safety issue for our faculty members that needs to be definitively addressed.
Expanding parental leave also benefits students by not disrupting course scheduling by having a different faculty member entering the classroom part way through a term. It also benefits supervisors and faculty who would not have to seek changes in staffing mid-semester. It is a win-win-win proposition.
CFA members have tried to negotiate an extended period of parental leave at the bargaining table for several years. In negotiations, every one of our proposals has been met with a firm and categorical rejection from CSU management, who have told us the current 30 days is “generous.”
Our CFA-CSU parental work group met from June 2022 through May 2023 for a total of 23 hours of negotiations. CFA members proposed a full semester of leave, which was again rejected. CSU managers could not offer a rationale for this rejection, and indeed could not even provide a full accounting of how, when, and which faculty take parental leave.
Join CFA members in urging Newsom to sign AB 1123 so our faculty can have the time they need with their families.
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