Faculty walkout at Cal State

MEMBERS OF the California Faculty Association (CFA) at Cal State Dominguez Hills and Cal State East Bay picketed and rallied November 17 as part of a coordinated one-day strike to raise awareness about the disastrous state of affairs in California's higher education system.

Representing over 23,000 full-time faculty and lecturers, the CFA was on strike for the first time in its existence to stop Chancellor Charles Reed, head of the California State University (CSU) system, from implementing trigger cuts that would stop a negotiated pay raise for CFA members.

The strike came on the heels of the CSU Board of Trustees decision to raise student fees 9 percent--in addition to a 12.5 percent increase voted through early this year. Meanwhile, the CSU system pays presidents on its 23 campuses an average of nearly $300,000 per year.

The formal reason for the strike was the reversal of a promised pay increase "that would have brought about 3,000 faculty members to pay parity with more recent hires in similar jobs," according to the San Francisco Chronicle. That grievance made the one-day walkout legal under California's convoluted labor laws for public employees.

But many strikers consider the union's message against tuition increases and the ongoing privatization and corporatization of the CSU system as an even more important reason to take action.

AT CAL State East Bay in Hayward, about 300 CFA stopped traffic, picketed and rallied at the campus. The size of the protest was bolstered by faculty members from 11 CSU campuses in the northern part of the state.

Strike action started early in the morning, with teachers and lecturers slowing down the traffic going onto the campus. At a noon rally, speakers used the Occupy movement's "mic check" to raise awareness about the crisis in education. A flash-mob, also danced to the tune of "I Will Survive," with 99 percent-themed lyrics. By the end of the day, the main entrance of the campus was shut down by protesters.

"It's about time that the labor movement has caught up to the concerns of the Occupy Wall Street movement," said Huda Prucha, a lecturer in the Kinesiology Department at Cal State East Bay. Her son attends University of California Berkeley and is facing the rising costs of tuition in that system, too. "It's hard to see his bill every month while our paychecks are going down--it's just not fair.

Carlos Torres, a student at Cal State East Bay, came out to support the striking faculty. He talked about how the decision of the CSU Trustees to increase tuition by 9 percent affected him. "It's hard when you see you and your classmates facing these tuition increases and then unable to find work once you leave," Torres said.

Birch Moonwomon, a Sonoma State English professor, explained how the administration has been using money for buildings and administrative salaries, while staff has been cut. "We've had 130 teachers cut, and it's clear to the students that every teacher equals a course," she said. For students, that means a longer time to get the required courses they need to graduate.

Meanwhile, at the Cal State Dominguez Hills campus in Carson, just south of Los Angeles, as many as 2,000 faculty members, students and supporters rallied and walked picket lines over the course of the day. The CFA organized a system of shuttle vans to deliver coffee, sandwiches and reinforcements in support of picket lines at 10 different entrances to the sprawling Dominguez Hills campus.

The preparation paid off, as the campus was completely shut down. At an end-of-day rally, a CFA staffer reported a conversation with a student who said, "It feels like a Sunday here."

Activists in United Teachers Los Angeles and the Occupy Los Angeles labor solidarity committee organized a bus to bring activists to Dominguez Hills from the Los Angeles City Hall encampment 20 miles away. For the ride back, CFA organizers gave us all of their remaining food and water from the picket lines to the Occupy LA food tent.