Tuesday, September 19, 2006

impasse on the way

CSU and CFA bargaining talks broke down for good last week. CSU went to the Public Employee Relations Board to request a declaration of impasse, then sent out email saying that CFA walked away from a generous 24% increase in salaries over 4 years, then a press release saying the same thing. Now CFA has issued a press release saying CSU is attempting to distract attention from the facts that they gave CSU executives a 13% raise in one year last year, and that the raises that faculty could really count on were more like 12% over 4 years (or less than the rate of inflation).

Of course, I believe the CFA side. But I'm a CFA activist, so that's to be expected.

I mention it because I believe it's going to get extremely nasty this time. Four years ago it was bad. CFA people followed Chancellor Charles Reed ("Chancellor Chuckles" to me) around with a Charlie puppet and picket signs. There were work actions, slow-downs, non-compliance kinds of things. I think it's going to be worse by an order of magnitude. This time I can see the CFA voting for a walkout, and faculty picketing campuses.

It looks like things are getting ugly on our own individual campus as well, but more on that later.

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