Socialist Action /March 1999
California State University Faculty Resists Attacks
By ANN ROBERTSON
An unexpected event happened in the California State University (CSU)
system that might well have ramifications for higher public education across
the nation. After a year of negotiations, the board of the faculty union,
the California Faculty Association (CFA), sent a Tentative Agreement to
the faculty for ratification-only to get it back with a resounding "no!"
Fifty-seven percent of the faculty voted against it, while 43 percent
gave it a "yes" vote. It is particularly instructive to note that
on almost all campuses that rejected it, most union members came out for
the vote. However, on most of those campuses supporting ratification, less
than one-half of the union members bothered to vote.
On one of these campuses, faculty members were led to believe that their
only choice was ratification-or the chancellor would impose something much
worse on them. No one told them that the union could reject the agreement
and push for continued negotiations.
This agreement was being touted by some of the top officers in the union
as "an improvement over the previous contract." In fact, it represented
a devastating setback, and most of the faculty, to its credit, figured this
out.
The worst element in the Agreement concerned a significant increase in
the amount of salary increases that would be awarded through a so-called
"merit pay" program. Salaries of faculty in the CSU system lag
a full 11 percent behind the salaries of faculty at comparable institutions;
merit pay, which causes workers to compete against one another for a raise,
has historically proven to keep all salaries low.
But merit pay programs have an even more insidious role to play. By pitting
faculty members against one another, their relations are poisoned and they
lose all sense of solidarity, thereby becoming incapable of combating further
incursions into their working conditions.
In the case of CSU, as with other public universities, the "powers
that be" have even worse proposals lurking in the shadows. For example,
the CSU chancellor, Charles Reed, has gone on record favoring the elimination
of tenure. After all, the university would save considerable money if it
could replace highly qualified senior faculty by cheap part-timers.
Another cost-saving device that the administration is eager to implement
is a vast increase in on-line "education," where students would
no longer sit in a classroom but at a computer terminal in order to take
a course. Both of these proposals, if implemented, would seriously undermine
the quality of education provided to students.
In addition to the merit pay program, the Tentative Agreement had virtually
nothing of substance to offer the part-time faculty, who constitute almost
50 percent of all faculty and who are severely exploited. Part-timers have
no job security and most lack health benefits. One complained that she made
more money per hour cleaning houses than teaching at San Francisco State
University.
This Tentative Agreement was brokered by union officials who have become
increasingly unpopular among the faculty ranks. These same people negotiated
the two previous contracts, both containing big losses, so that the faculty
has been infected by a sense of demoralization and membership has declined.
Employing a suicidal strategy, these misleaders have concentrated their
efforts on electing Democrats to office, especially California Gov. Gray
Davis, who was heralded as nothing short of the faculty's savior. Almost
no attempt was made to mobilize the faculty to defend its own interests.
Once Gray Davis was elected and the faculty saw that he did nothing for
them during negotiations, the instructors' sense of betrayal swelled. When
Gray Davis went so far as to appoint Barry Munitz to head up his transitional
team-Munitz was the previous chancellor of CSU and the arch-enemy of the
faculty union-faculty bitterness metamorphosed into open anger directed
at the union officials responsible for relying on Davis.
The faculty is surely opposing powerful interests in this defensive campaign.
Due to heightened global competition, corporations have felt obliged throughout
the world to press for decreased expenditures on public education; they
would benefit immediately in two ways:
1) Since corporations contribute to public education through the tax
system, they can demand more tax relief when fewer dollars are required
for education.
2) If public universities succeed in significantly lowering costs so
that more students can be educated with less money, not only will the quality
of education these students receive be lowered, but their starting salary
when they enter the labor market will be lowered as well.
These attacks on education have met with strong resistance throughout
the world. By staging mass demonstrations, students in France, Germany,
and even Israel have succeeded in turning the tide, forcing governments
to augment education budgets.The faculty at CSU can also prevail, but not
without cultivating allies.
Faculty members must first reach out to their students who have an obvious
stake in defending quality education. Then, by means of the students, who
number over 300,000, and through the union movement, the faculty must take
its cause to the working public.
In polls, the public has indicated strong support for quality, public
education. Moreover, the UPS strike demonstrated that the public is firmly
opposed to the abuse of part-time workers.
If the faculty takes these steps and wins this struggle, it will provide
an inspiring example to students and faculty across the nation who are facing
these and similar attacks.
Ann Robertson is a part-time instructor at San Francisco
State University.
Socialist Action /March 1999 |