SAN JOSE >> The union representing California State University’s 25,000 faculty members has voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike — which, if called, would apparently be the first in the state’s history — union leaders announced Wednesday.
Nearly 95 percent of the faculty voted to allow union leaders to call a systemwide strike early next year should the union and CSU system be unable to resolve their dispute, which revolves around faculty pay. The California Faculty Association, which rejected a 2 percent raise offered earlier this year, is demanding 5 percent increases for all of its members and an additional 1.2 percent for some faculty.
“It’s one thing to ask us to tighten our belts during hard times because we want to serve our students — and we’ve done that,” union President Jennifer Eagan said during Wednesday’s news conference at San Jose State. “But the recession is over, the governor and the Legislature have reinvested in the CSU, and now is the time for us to be able to catch up.”
The union, which represents professors, lecturers, librarians and counselors, has made its case this year in a series of reports highlighting the financial struggles of CSU professors throughout the 23-campus system. The reports called attention to the plight of lower-paid temporary lecturers — who in recent years have grown to more than half of CSU faculty — as well as to figures showing inferior earnings growth compared with increases enjoyed by faculty in the University of California system and other public universities around the country.
Kevin Wehr, chairman of the bargaining team, said management has looked bored and distracted during negotiations. “Maybe a 94.4 percent strike vote will get their attention,” he said. “Their 2 percent pittance is insulting.”
The association’s proposal would cost nearly $102 million, including $82 million for the 5 percent increase, according to CSU spokeswoman Laurie Weidner.
Faculty say CSU has the money — it received $217 million more from the state this year as California restores funding it slashed from colleges during the Great Recession — and that it should direct more of its funding to faculty, rather than to administrative salaries.
But CSU Chancellor Tim White — who visited the San Jose campus Wednesday to meet with students and faculty — noted during a public forum that the university system still has about $200 million less than it did in 2008, when the U.S. economy went into a tailspin.
“With high demand and high needs, we have to live within our means,” White told the audience.
Eagan, the faculty association president, said this was her fourth strike vote since she joined the CSU faculty in 1999 but that there has not been a systemwide strike in recent memory — if ever. Faculty at several campuses, including CSU East Bay in Hayward, held a one-day strike in 2011.
Students hope the current dispute doesn’t make history.
“What can I say? It’s kind of stressful,” said Jennifer Tovar, a 20-year-old San Jose State hospitality major from Hayward. “It affects all of us.”