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Cal Poly faculty planning walkout

November 7, 2011

By KAREN VELIE

Faculty members at Cal Poly are planning to walk out of classes on Tuesday for a brief protest over Chancellor Charles Reed’s decision to cancel scheduled raises.

Faculty from CSU campuses throughout California will protest against the “1 percent” who run the universities. Cal Poly faculty is planning to meet at the quad and march down to the administration building at noon.

“We are doing this to protest the lack of a fair contract from the chancellor’s office,” said Tim O’Keefe, retired Cal Poly faculty and current political action chair for the local California Faculty Association (CFA). “He has refused to bargain in good faith.”

At issue is the dispute over the faculty contract for 2008 to 2010, which promised a five percent raise and the increased salaries of faculty to the level of new hires. The contract also said it would be renegotiated if the state budget crisis continued. [SFGate]

At this time, the faculty union said they are asking only for pay parity for about 3,000 employees – out of about 24,000 – earning less than the more recent hires, the San Francisco Chronicle said.

“Students and faculty feel the same way about Chancellor Reed as the Occupy Wall Street protesters feel about decisions that benefit 1 percent of the population,” said Lillian Taiz, president of the CFA, to the Chronicle. “The chancellor is doing exactly the same to our CSU by hiking student fees, cutting classes and not paying the faculty raises that he agreed to. It is wrong, and we will hold him accountable.”

During the past year, in response to the budget crisis, CSU has reduced enrollment by 10,000 students and increased tuition by 23 percent.

In January, CSU trustees approved a compensation package for Dr. Jeffrey Armstrong, the new president of Cal Poly, for $350,000 with an additional annual supplement of $30,000 to be paid from the campus foundation.

Until then, the university’s published salary range for campus presidents was from $223,584 to $328,212.


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President, Administration, & Faculty are all guilty….


Stop the GREED, Stop the CORRUPTION, Stop the LOBBYISTS, & Stop the INEQUITY!!!


Democracy Now!!


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Guilty of what?


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What most people don’t understand, is that CP administration has enjoyed a

29-35% in salary in the last 6 yrs. Warren Baker, in the midst of the recession got a huge raise the last 2 yrs. of his tenure to bump up his retirement pay. The problem isn’t the public sector employees or unions, it’s the administrators, e.g. Bell and Vernon. How much does the admin. asst. for Armstrong? I bet it’s more than any tenured professor! Cut The Fat From The top First!!


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If anyone questions TrueGrit and the statement made, please click on the link I posted at the first comment on this thread. Or, to make it easy, here is the link again. It seems it has always been in administrations that school and colleges really screw the taxpayers and those who pay tuition.


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Good article Bob. Thanks. Forgive my typos!


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Seems like both the students and professors should walk out of class and head right over to the President’s house and protest HIS salary. $380K a year when they continue to raise tuition and the professors not getting their increases to the level of new hires is ridiculous. What’s the benefit package that Armstrong received (besides getting a house to live in)?


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“In January, CSU trustees approved a compensation package for Dr. Jeffrey Armstrong, the new president of Cal Poly, for $350,000 with an additional annual supplement of $30,000 to be paid from the campus foundation.”


Way to go Tim, the CP Pres pay is ridiculous. It’s not right to screw the long standing Prof’s. Protest the 1%, I love it.


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If a faculty member walks out of a class of ‘paid their tuition’ college students then that should be grounds for termination.


This a PROTEST… not a union sanctioned STRIKE.


Protest on your own dime!


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Agreed.


This is human nature. Nobody wants to share the pain. Everyone wants to talk about everybody else but when it comes to “your” turn–well then it’s time to protest.


They have yet to realize they are lucky to be employed at all. And the most of the rest of us have yet to realized how much more pain is coming down the pike.


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A “recession” is when your neighbor is out of work.


A “depression” is when YOU are out of work.


What a difference point of view makes!


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Just because they want fair raises for the work they do doesn’t mean they don’t understand the realities of our economy.


Your kind of thinking is what the big corporations are using to drive down the American worker’s pay. First the corporations destroy our economy, then they tell us we should be grateful for having a job at all, and should accept whatever the employers feel like paying us.


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I believe the article is misleading. I was told by one of the faculty members that is participating that it is not a walkout but rather a demonstration in the UU from noon to 1pm. Another thing to consider before criticizing professors is that those hired within the last few years most likely have large debts from tuition which has been rising for years, ergo they must make a decent wage from the government to pay back the government…so it goes.


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Nobody walked out of class. Karen Velie made that up. So go take a cold shower.


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How do you know that no one walked out on a class? Because it was scheduled at “lunchtime” doesn’t mean zip, since classes are routinely scheduled during lunchtime.


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It’s getting a little old hearing the whining from the union sector. All of us in the private sector have had to make cuts and adjust, not the unions.

I agree with darwin, I have not seen an automatic cost of living increase in the private sector…


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It would be a nice sentiment if you knew what you’re talking about. Thousands of CSU faculty have been laid off or not rehired. Those who remain haven’t had an “automatic cost of living increase” in at least decades — in fact, no such thing exists. Kids are crammed into classes never designed for the numbers in them because of a faculty shortage. hey can’t get classes, so it takes five, six, seven years to get through college. When the pay raises that were reneged upon (before the severe budget cuts, by the way, because the CSU chancellor had “other priorities” for the money even though he’d agreed to the raises) the CSU faculty pay was 24% below comparable public institutions across the country. This in the most expensive place in the country to live. The raises were intended to help narrow that gap to stop the drain of talented faculty to other institutions — i.e., a market response. If you want your kids or grand kids to have a decent public education, you need to have good teachers to teach them. What part of that don’t you understand? So please quit whining about “unions” till you have your facts straight.


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Why should anybody want their kids to have a “public education”? What’s wrong with a “private education”? Get the gd gubmint out of the education business and turn it over to a free market and these abuses will die on the vine in a heartbeat.


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Am I a bad person for not feeling sorry for a bunch of over-paid academicians complaining they are not making more? This is only slightly more irritating than the SLO PD complaining about their pay packages.


Sorry, just not feeling the love for anything in the State College or University level.


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rOy….it’s just news man. No need to “feel” or “touch” or conjure up the touchy feelie thing.


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Agree. If they don’t like the way it is they ought to quit and go out and get one of those high paying jobs that they think they are entitled to.


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The new President should have his salary reduced for bad taste alone, if nothing else. The idea of remodeling the inside of the President’s California Spanish style home into a Scandinavian mountain lodge says it all.


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For anyone who doubts that those in charge of our universities are in the 1 % of earners, here is a truly eye opening article. I find the report here interesting since the crux of the protest is for some 3000 employees are the ones being affected, earning less than new hires; can anyone explain that ?


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Merit-based pay?


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It happens in a lot of field. The university is so worried about attracting new talent that they forget about the talent they already have.


On another note, many of us in the private sector had to take a cut in pay a couple years ago AND we still had to show up 5 days a week. It is getting a little old hearing about our public employees having to be furloughed, at least you get the day off. At least the university isn’t cutting pay, they are just canceling raises. I haven’t seen a cost of living raise in the private sector in years. And the president and all his men … over paid as well. A true leader would start with cutting his own budget to set a positive example.


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