Faculty Reach Tentative Agreement With California State University One Day Into Strike

• One day into a planned five-day systemwide strike, faculty have reached a tentative agreement with California State University (CSU).
• The new contracts include salary raises and other benefits such as raising the salary floor and more paid parental leave.
• Faculty will return to work and suspend all strike activity.

Just one day into their planned five-day, systemwide strike, California State University (CSU) faculty reached a tentative agreement with the university, averting an ever larger disruption to the beginning of the spring semester.

"The collective action of so many lecturers, professors, counselors, librarians, and coaches over these last eight months forced CSU management to take our demands seriously. This Tentative Agreement makes major gains for all faculty at the CSU," California Faculty Association (CFA) President Charles Toombs said in a statement.

CFA kicked off its statewide strike Jan. 22 in support of workers' demands that CSU management had not met, including pay raises, increasing the salary floor, and more gender-neutral bathrooms and lactation spaces in campus buildings.

CFA represents 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors, and coaches across the CSU system's campuses, which enroll some 460,000 students. It is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU Local 1983) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

One of the largest issues for workers was salary increases. The tentative agreement includes 5% salary increases for all faculty members, retroactive to July 2023, and an additional 5% increase in July 2024, contingent on how much state funding the CSU receives.

The agreement also includes raising the minimum salary for the lowest-paid faculty, increasing paid parental leave to 10 weeks, and mandating a union representative for interactions between faculty and police.

"I am extremely pleased and deeply appreciative that we have reached common ground with CFA that will end the strike immediately," CSU Chancellor Mildred García said in a statement.

"The agreement enables the CSU to fairly compensate its valued, world-class faculty while protecting the university system's long-term financial sustainability. With the agreement in place, I look forward to advancing our student-centered work — together — as the nation's greatest driver of social mobility and the pipeline fueling California's diverse and educated workforce."