CFA stands up to Reed

By Veronica Natal |Staff Writer|

The California Faculty Association’s (CFA) board voted to authorize a one-day strike Thursday, Nov. 17, at only two campuses according to the CFA website.

The strike will be held at CSU Dominguez Hills and CSU East Bay.

A CFA conference call was held on Monday, Nov. 7 where members revealed 93 percent of the statewide CFA members had voted to support the strike.

The CFA board made it clear during the conference call that they are striking over Chancellor Charles B. Reed’s refusal to uphold his agreement in 2007 about faculty raises for the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 school years.

CSUSB CFA President, Professor Marcia Marx, in a former interview with the Coyote Chronicle said, “There were 607 salary raises (worth $6.5 million) awarded in the last two years to administrators while, 10,000 courses were cut and over 2,500 faculty lost work.”

Marx went on to explain in that interview, the 2011-2012 CSU budget is over $200 million more than it was in the faculty contract negotiated back in 2007- 2008 school year.

“CSUSB will not be on strike but we will be taking a bus load of faculty from our campus to support the strike and a student contingency is going that day as well,” said Marx this past week.

Marx explained that for the faculty who are coming to support the strike, some may take a personal holiday, give students outside class assignments, have others teach their class or utilize Blackboard for their classes.

“There is a whole menu of options in lieu of canceling their classes. We will be back after 4 p.m. for those classes in the evening,” said Marx.

During the CFA conference it was said that if Reed were to keep his current stance and refuse to budge, CFA is willing to escalate their tactics.

Marx claimed Reed wants to have more online classes, basically managed by the Chancellor’s office referring to it as the 24th campus.

The motivation for online classes is for profit and it would change the quality of campus education if faculty were not behind the classes. It would all be done by managers from the one percent who would be making a profit.

The reason for the strike is clearly the unpaid wages, however, there is a larger cancer in the system of the top one percent management being in control and a lack of faculty governance according to Marx.

As reported from the CFA website, “Next week’s strike is symptomatic of much bigger problems, not just the issues we are striking over, so don’t forget our scheduled pickets on all CSU campuses this Tuesday and Wednesday.”

On Nov. 9, the CSUSB CFA informational picketing took place in front of campus and Students for Quality Education (SQE) will be speaking out in front of the Pfau Library Nov. 16.

There will be speakers, poets and musicians during the demonstration. The SQE flier states, “while 99 percent of the CSU suffers, the top one percent is getting richer.”

The faculty and students are “linked” explained Marx.

When the work load for teachers has increased with no raises, they are demoralized. This amounts to pressure mounting on teachers who strive to provide a quality education, all the while their workload (class size growing, less resources available, cut program funding) increases without compensation (wage increases)

Chancellor Reed has yet to comment on the upcoming strike.

Marx ended, “There’s no question, a strike is implemented. Are you ready?”