California Faculty Assn

The unionized faculty at Cal State University's 23 campuses have overwhelmingly approved a new contract that will boost pay by at least 20.7% over four years, officials said. The contract, affirmed by 97% of the California Faculty Assn., averted a threatened series of two-day walkouts by professors, librarians, coaches and counselors. The Cal State system's Board of Trustees is expected to approve the contract at its meeting next week. The pact is retroactive to 2006 and runs into 2010.

A forum for candidates for mayor of Los Angeles is scheduled for Thursday at noon in front of the Cal State Northridge Student Union Center. The forum is sponsored by three campus organizations, the Progressive Young Democrats, the California Faculty Assn. and the Student Union. It will feature several candidates, including Nick Patsaouras, Richard Katz, Julian Nava, who teaches at the school, and several others.

When he took office last spring, California State University Chancellor Charles B. Reed began trying to base more of professors' pay on performance. Faculty members protested, even mounting a 1960s-style march in Sacramento two weeks ago in which they donned academic robes, belted out union songs and called for Reed's ouster. That all changed with Reed's announcement Monday that the California Faculty Assn.

A California law requiring thousands of university and college employees to pay union dues has survived a series of lawsuits sponsored by the Virginia-based National Right to Work Foundation. The group on Monday lost an appeal in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a case against the California Faculty Assn., which represents 20,000 faculty members in the California State University system.

Rain may have put a damper on a planned rally at Cal State Northridge on Wednesday to protest two June 2 ballot measures, but it did not drown out the vocal opposition expressed by CSUN faculty, students and staff over the initiatives.

A scheduled contract grievance hearing between former Cal State Northridge women's basketball Coach Janet Martin and a university official was postponed indefinitely Thursday because Martin's representative from the California Faculty Assn. was unable to attend. The grievance, which contests the length of Martin's contract with the school, was to be heard by Donald Cameron, executive assistant to the vice president for academic affairs.

Janet Martin, Cal State Northridge's former women's basketball coach, has decided not to pursue her third and final option on a grievance that called for the school to pay her $16,000 in salary to which she claimed she was entitled. Martin's appeal had been rejected in two previous grievance hearings. Reached by telephone Saturday in Seattle, she said she had been advised that continuing to pursue the case would take "lots and lots of money and possibly many, many years."

In giving the correct figures in regard to full-time faculty salaries, Diana Guerin and G. Nanjundappa of the Fullerton Chapter of the California Faculty Assn. did not mention the plight of the part-time faculty members at Cal State Fullerton (Letters, Nov. 30). Like most full-time faculty, I teach three courses--this semester, respectively, 80, 63 and 54 students. Except for a four-year hiatus following the passage of Proposition 13, I have been teaching at CSUF since 1975. My contract for the current academic year is for $22,816.

Trustees of the Cal State University system Tuesday approved 4% salary raises for the 23 campus presidents and five other top officials. The move, retroactive to July, was strongly opposed by the faculty union, which is in stalled salary negotiations with the university. "I'm disappointed. I think it sends a signal to everybody that the priorities of the board are with a relatively small group of people," said John Travis, president of the California Faculty Assn.

Leaders of the union representing 20,000 professors, librarians, coaches and other employees at the 22-campus California State University system voted unanimously Sunday to authorize a strike in response to what labor officials said was an impasse in contract negotiations. "If the administration doesn't begin bargaining seriously, it's unfortunately going to begin to happen," said Jim Smith, spokesman for the California Faculty Assn. "The question is when?