At 52 years old, I am abundantly educated, with two bachelor's degrees, a teaching credential, a master's degree, and a doctorate that I completed while raising three children. However, my daughters can make more money than me in their 20s. I am a professor at California State University. And one of the highest-paid privileged people.
I knew that becoming an educator wouldn't make me rich. While I worked diligently for years to obtain tenure and promotion to the rank of associate professor and then to the rank of professor, I did my job with joy. He may not have earned as much as the lawyer my late father wanted him to be, but he had a job he loved, a positive work environment, and a decent salary.
Until now. In negotiations with the California Teachers Association. Representing 29,000 CSU faculty (the largest public university system in the United States), management abandoned the negotiation and imposed their last, best, and final offer of just a 5% pay increase.
This offer is insulting. I prepare future generations of special education teachers, but my salary is lower (about $22,000 a year with my Ph.D.) than I would make if I had remained a teacher in the Arcadia Unified School District (admittedly, a district that pays good to the teachers). I know I also earn less compared to my peers at California community colleges and the University of California. And that gap will continue to widen, not just for me, but for other equally hard-working faculty on the lower rungs of the CSU pay scale.
The CSU's 5% offer is well below the CFA's proposal for a 12% increase, which would keep pace with inflation from 2021. (According to consumer price indices, CSU professors have lost 10 % in purchasing power during this period; the CFA pay application would actually equate to a 2% increase.) To make matters worse, we have been informed that parking fees will increase by 15%.
The union also proposed raising the minimum wage for our lowest-paid faculty and establishing more reasonable workloads, longer parental leaves, better counselor-to-student ratios (on my campus, this ratio is 1 to 4,000; it should be 1 to 1,500). ) and more spaces for breastfeeding and gender-inclusive bathrooms on campuses. The CSU negotiating team ignored most of these proposals and canceled the negotiation sessions.
The faculty receives emails from at least one administrative manager (whose salary, I know, is three times mine), saying that CSU cannot afford to increase our salary more than 5% or meet our demands for working conditions. Chancellor Mildred Garcia would deny the university's lowest-paid professors, who start at $54,360 a year, a $10,000 raise for that floor, even as she earns a compensation package of nearly $1 million a year.
And the CSU maintains that its $8.6 billion in reserves cannot be used because it may be needed in the event of an emergency. Professors walked off the job the first week of the spring semester (and potentially longer) to strike for living wages. is an emergency.
Students pay tuition, which the CSU Board of Trustees recently voted to increase by 34% over the next five years, because they want to enroll in classes with professors who are committed to them, not tired of having a second and sometimes , a third job just to survive. in these economic times.
The state funds CSU because its faculty educate nearly 500,000 students who go on to become nurses, engineers and other professionals in California. Nearly 50% of the state's K-12 teachers are educated on a Cal State campus.
And yet, CSU spent less than 34% of its budget on instruction in 2022.
Over the past 15 years, according to an analysis last month by CalMatters, full-time CSU faculty have seen raises of 22% on average since 2007, while the base salary of presidents across Cal State's 23 campuses has increased 43% on average. The largest category of staff increases in 2018-2022 came among administrators, not instructors.
And where did the system's $8.6 billion in reserves come from? It was built on the backs of teachers and staff. According to an independent financial analysis commissioned by the CFA, Cal State's operating cash flow surpluses (they have existed every year between 2015 and 2022) could cover the difference between the administration's offer and the CFA's proposals without resorting to Bookings. However, the administration prefers to invest in itself and the stock market rather than in teachers and staff.
Saving for an emergency is important, but only after you cover essential expenses.
On January 22, professors, lecturers, librarians, coaches and counselors at California State University's 23 campuses will leave their jobs. Will management finally recognize that investing in ourselves and our working conditions is essential?
Leila Ansari Ricci is a professor of special education and former department chair at California State University, Los Angeles.
