CFA, CSU near stalemate

The California Faculty Association and the Cal State University system are heading toward a stalemate in negotiations over salary if the two sides cannot agree on how to implement faculty raises, said campus and CFA officials. 

"It's not looking good," said Robert Maxson, Cal State Long Beach president. "I hope everything works out, but I think it's headed right for an impasse."

CFA, the union that represents teachers in the CSU system, wants to scrap the Faculty Merit Increase program, said Hamdi Bilici, president of the CSULB chapter of the union. The union is asking for a moratorium on the program until 2001, Bilici said. 

The merit increase program is a method of evaluating faculty for raises, where faculty annually submit a report on their work to college deans in order to get a raise. 

The union feels that the policy is not defined clearly enough and that deans and administrators are making some decisions about who gets a raise arbitrarily, said union representatives.

However, the union agreed to the terms of the merit increase program in the current contract it has with the university and should keep up their obligation, said Samuel Strafaci, senior director of employee relations for the Office of the Chancelor.

"They're trying to avoid living up to the contract," Strafaci said. 

An impasse would result in moving the negotiations into a mediation phase, where a third party would assist the CSU system and the union in finding some common ground, Strafaci said.

The union and the CSU system are negotiating a 6 percent raise for teachers, though they cannot agree how to implement the raise, said Gary Reichard, vice president of academic affairs. The raise is contingent on an agreement on the merit increase program, Reichard said. 

The CSU is offering to put 3.6 percent of $61 million into a pool for pay raises, Strafaci said. Another 2.4 percent will go into a pool and for teachers who qualify under the merit increase program, he said. 

The union wants the full 6 percent without having to go through the merit increase process, citing that teachers are evaluated throughout their careers anyway, said William Johnson, vice president of the CSULB chapter of the CFA. 

However, Strafaci points out that teachers are evaluated once every six years when they are eligible for promotion. 

The CSU modeled the merit increase program on those used by 20 schools in the California Postsecondary Education Commission, known as the CPEC 20, Strafaci said. 

"Everyone of them has a merit program similar to ours," Strafaci said.