Faculty and staff at CSULB line up to cast their votes for the Strike 411 on Monday in front of the McIntosh building. Strike 411 aims to increase 5% salary for faculty and staff.
With upraised fists, campaign banners and chants that could be heard across campus, the California State University, Long Beach chapter of the California Faculty Association opened voting Monday to authorize a strike.
The strike vote came about after final budget negotiations with the California State University Chancellor failed last week.
CFA set up a polling station in the courtyard behind the McIntosh Humanities Building and turned the quad into a platform for faculty activists to share their stories and garner support in their “Fight for Five.”
The CFA launched the “Fight for Five” campaign in an attempt to garner a 5-percent general salary increase for faculty at each of the 23 CSU campuses. Throughout the duration of the campaign, CFA representatives have threatened to open a vote for concerted action if their salary requests were not granted.
CSULB CFA President Doug Domingo-Forasté opened the rally with a speech explaining that he and his colleagues had reached their limit and saw no other viable option for success than to authorize a strike.
“Does anybody here want to strike?” Domingo-Forasté asked the crowd. “No. We love our jobs and that’s why we stay here for so little money.”
He continued, saying that faculty can only tolerate so much.
Michael Molis, a part time lecturer at CSULB, casts a vote for Strike 411 on Monday in front of the McIntosh building. Molis believes that there should be a definite paid increase that needs to be given to faculties across CSU campuses and 5% increase is a fair raise.
“The university thinks it can do education on the cheap,” Domingo-Forasté said. “If you think our students only deserve the lowest quality education, you’re in the wrong place.”
As long as the CFA and the CSU have been negotiating salary, the CFA has maintained that the current wages rates paid to part-time and non-tenured faculty cannot sustain even a middle-class lifestyle.
Domingo-Forasté turned the microphone over to Mike Chavez, a lecturer turned tenure-track assistant professor of sociology, to share his personal experience with unsatisfactory pay. Chavez said that he worked as part-time faculty for seven years on multiple CSU campuses and barely managed a secure an economic life for himself.
“I was exploited in ways as a part-timer [that] I didn’t even understand at the time,” Chavez said. “It’s time to demand the same respect we give to our students, our campus, our entire university.”
There are growing concerns from the CFA that continuing on with unsatisfactory wages will lead faculty to either seek secondary jobs, decrease the time and energy expended on students, or leave the teaching field completely.
Not only would an exodus of faculty put the system in a precarious situation, but deeply impact the students of each campus.
“This is the reality for a lot of folks and I think our students need to know this. What are we telling them when we say an investment in their future isn’t worth it?” Chavez said.
Members of the CFA will be able to vote until Oct. 28 online or in person on each CSU campus.