Marching for a contract
Demonstrators march, present Welty petition asking for changes to CSU faculty contracts
Andrew Riggs / The Collegian
About 50 people marched around the campus fountain near the Free Speech Area to ask for changes to CSU contracts with faculty members. The demonstrators went on to deliver a petition to University President John Welty, who was not in his office at the time. |
By Morgan Steger
The Collegian
With picket signs held aloft, about 50 Fresno State faculty, students and staff marched to President Welty’s office Wednesday afternoon to deliver more than 300 signatures demanding that he and other administrators support a fair contract for CSU faculty.
The protest, organized by the California Faculty Association, called for CSU administrators to come to the bargaining table with CFA to develop a contract that would increase faculty salaries without increasing student fees, reduce class sizes and increase tenure-track hiring.
Held in front of the fountain on campus, the protest was one of many coordinated CFA actions occurring at all 23 CSU campuses this week.
Protesting faculty want Welty and other administrators to know they are deeply upset with the CSU administration’s contract proposals, which they view as unfair to both themselves and students, said Mike Clifton, an English Department lecturer and a representative of CFA.
Walter Ramirez, a student intern for CFA, said the issues on the bargaining table, like fee increases, directly affect Fresno State students. Ramirez said in the past two to three years student fees have increased by 70 percent and there are plans to increase fees by 10 percent a year, for four years, in the future.
Fee increases coupled with limited class availability will make it harder for already cash-strapped students to attend CSUs, Ramirez said.
“I want to support the professors and teachers to give us a good education. Every semester when we try to register for classes they’re already full because there are no enough professors,” Ramirez said. “And the problem is when we don’t register, our time for graduation is extended. More professors mean the time for graduation would be shorter.”
One of the primary issues protestors were contesting was the proposal of small faculty salary increases to be stretched over a three-year period.
Fresno State is part of CSU system, the largest educational system in the United States, but faculty members, many of whom have doctorate degrees, are paid 18 percent less than community college instructors, said Manuel Figueroa, a professor of Chicano and Latin American studies. “We’re fighting just to get a two percent increase in our salaries,” he said.
Protestor Glenn De Voogd, a professor of literacy and early education, said if salary levels don’t increase, Fresno State will be unable to hire new, high-quality professors. “If we want excellent professors we need to make this an attractive place,” he said. Faculty in the Department of Literacy and Early Education often make less money than their students do as elementary school teachers, De Voogd said.
While salary levels for top administrators have increased by more than 13 percent, newly hired professors don’t even make enough to buy homes in the community in which they teach, said Fresno State CFA President Carlos Perez. “We’re losing a lot of potential professors for this campus,” Perez said. “Our salaries have not gone up even when the cost of housing has been increasing in the last five years.”
Increasing salaries to attract the best candidates and hiring more tenure-track professors would help to reduce class size and increase the number of classes available to Fresno State students, he said.
Thomas Lopez, a criminology major who attended the protest, said he was concerned about the number of classes available to students. “I don’t want to be stuck here one more semester just because there’s not enough faculty,” he said. Lopez, who was wearing a CFA armband in support of demonstrators, said he was there to help out the faculty. “They’re educating us,” he said. “They deserve better.”
CFA organizers hope that the campus action campaign will spur the CSU administration to revisit some of its contract proposals, Perez said. If administrators refuse to take CFA’s demands into consideration when finalizing the contract proposals, Perez said it might be necessary to intensify protest actions. As a last resort, Perez said CSA would consider voting on a statewide strike, if contract negotiators can’t find common ground.
University Communications Director Shirley Armbruster said university administration had no official comment on the demonstration.
“We respect the right of the faculty to conduct demonstrations,” a spokesperson for the CSU System, Clara Potes-Fellow, said of the statewide protests.
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