CFA alleges gender bias

The California Faculty Association is contending that preliminary data from the last two rounds of pay raises for Cal State University faculty were possibly tainted by system-wide gender discrimination.

"Preliminary findings point in the direction of gender discrimination," said Hamdi Bilici, president of the CFA. "Cal State Long Beach was not one of the campuses in the preliminary study," he added.

But, the CFA alleges that on other campuses fewer women received raises and those raises were smaller than those given to men.

The question of gender discrimination was brought up by the National Education Association last week after its preliminary review of data on pay raises in the CSU system.

"I have no evidence that this has been the case" at CSULB, said Robert Maxson, CSULB president.

The Office of the Chancellor is examining the data, said Samuel Stafaci, senior director of employee relations for the office.

According to Strafaci, there has been "no disparate treatment on the basis of ethnicity or gender in the awarding of faculty merit increases (FMI)." The office will publicly issue a report on the matter at the end of next week.

"I think it's always best for an institution to review the statistics," he said. "Although there has been no evidence that this has happened on our campus."

CSULB is not conducting a study independant of the Office of the Chancellor, which is reviewing data from all 24 Cal State campuses, because there have been no complaints from this campus, said Gary Reichard, vice president of academic affairs.

The CFA is the union that represents teachers in the Cal State University system. In the FMI process, faculty submits a report of their work to the deans of their respective colleges.

The union believes that there is room for deans to arbitrarily grant pay raises in a manner that would discriminate against women. The union has called the Faculty Merit Increase program "arbitrary" and the guidelines regulating the process "unclear."

The studies of the distribution of raises is so preliminary that evidence of other questions of discrimination, such as bias against minority faculty members, have not yet arisen, according to Bilici.

"The gender bias stood out," Bilici said.

The union has resisted the FMI program from the program's inception. As part of contract negotiations with the CSU, the union is asking for a moratorium on the merit program.

The union's "analysis of the program has been driven by their desire to see this program in abeyance," Strafaci said.

The CFA has notified the governor's office about the situation.