California State University professors' union strikes in protest over 'overeducation and low wages'
The professors' union at California State University, a public university in the United States, went on strike for five days starting from the first day of the semester on the 22nd, and began a street protest in the rain wearing red poncho uniforms and placards with the slogan "Overeducation, low wages."
"That's where we stand," union president Charles Toombs said in a speech today. "We know that a systematic strike at CSU (California State University) will become history."
The New York Times reported on the 23rd, “On Monday morning, union members in red ponchos protested at San Jose State University in the rain, shouting slogans such as ‘Overeducation and low wages’ and ‘Get up, come down, San Jose is a union city.’
The strike on this day began to affect the schedule for the start of the semester, and the strike was led by the California Faculty Association (CFA), which represents 2,900 professors, instructors, librarians, counselors, and coaches.
Faculty union members staged a one-day strike in early December at four of the system's largest campuses: Cal Poly Pomona, San Francisco State, Cal State Los Angeles and Sacramento State.
“This strike reflects two national trends in labor,” said Professor Ken Jacobs, co-chair of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Berkeley. “Faculty anxiety and universities are increasingly relying on part-time instructors and people with very low starting salaries. “It reflects this,” he told the NYT.
In the United States, education strikes increased last year as the Actors' Writers' Union strike and the Automobile Workers' Union's large-scale strike coincided.
Campus administration advised students to "contact their professors to see if they have classes this week," but 95 percent of union members who voted in favor of a strike last October supported the strike, and professors mostly did not respond to students' email requests. NYT revealed.
Most CSU classes were scheduled to start on the 22nd, and other schools had already started classes last week.
“Faculty, students and staff are talented, intelligent and driven people,” said a California Faculty Association (CFA) press release. More students will thrive if we have access to what they need. “CSU leadership must invest in direct providers such as teachers, counselors, coaches, and librarians,” he said on the 18th.
The union is demanding an increase in the minimum salary for full-time employees from $5,436 to $6,436, and is seeking other changes, including capping class sizes and expanding paid parental leave.
Last year, the California State University Board of Trustees approved a 6% annual tuition increase, resulting in a 34% tuition increase over five years.
The professors' union has been negotiating with the university headquarters since May of last year, and the university responded to the university's proposal for a '5% wage increase' with a '5-day strike' plan, and the professors' union's demand was a '12% increase', the NYT reported.
“If we agree to the union-demanded increase, we will have to make serious cuts to our programs and we will have to lay off employees,” Leora Freedman, the university's vice president for human resources, said at a press conference on the 19th. “The system’s educational mission will be jeopardized,” he said, adding, “The system recently agreed to a 5 percent wage increase with six other unions.”
The strike involved 23 C.S.U. It has started across campuses and is impacting approximately 46,000 students attending the nation's largest four-year public university system.
“We are fighting for faculty who make far less than the cost of living in expensive Silicon Valley,” Ray Buyco, a senior lecturer in the history department, told the NYT. “The average salary for a full-time lecturer is $54,000.”
Los Angeles school employees in the western United States went on a large-scale strike in March last year, the Oakland educators' union went on strike for nearly two weeks in May, and in December 2022, graduate student workers and researchers at the University of California in California went on strike. They went on strike for six weeks to protest against low wages.
The university professor strike took place in April last year, with approximately 900 full-time professors, graduate students, and postdoctoral researcher counselors at Rutgers University participating in the strike.
Regarding the professor strike, he said, “Across industries, we are struggling with rising wages, housing costs, and other living costs that cannot keep up with high inflation,” and “especially in California, where there were many strikes last year, the 2023 strike has been called the ‘hot summer of labor.’” NYT revealed.
“We are committed to compensating our employees fairly, but we must be equally committed to the long-term stability and success of CSU, and that means we must be fiscally prudent,” said President Mildred Garcia. “We must work within financial realities,” he said on the 19th, rejecting union demands.