Dear Colleagues:

As we all endeavor to manage our workloads, support our families, and protect our communities in these turbulent times, our union – CFA – is also in the thick of bargaining. And yes, we are traversing through some thick managerial muck!

We are writing to you as your two LA bargaining representatives, Dr. Libby Lewis (llewis@calfac.org) and Dr. Molly Talcott (mtalcott@calfac.org).

Last Thursday, we met with CSU management, and they made several proposals that are clear “take-backs” – in other words, attempts to erode the rights we enjoy in our existing collective bargaining agreement (AKA “the contract,” found here: https://www.calfac.org/contract-2022-2025/).

For example:

• CSU management wants to give campus presidents the unilateral power to suspend sabbatical awards in any given year for no verified reason.

• They want to eliminate future sabbaticals for any faculty member who does not submit their written sabbatical activities report following a sabbatical award.

• They want to change language in the Layoffs article (38) to make it easier to layoff faculty, only notifying the union until after a layoff decision has been made, and they want to reduce the notice required to give a faculty member facing layoff. As one of the few campuses still facing enrollment declines, Cal State LA faculty are particularly in the crosshairs of this management proposal.

• CSU management also wants to remove our right to grieve discrimination through the contractual process.

• CSU management wants to eliminate our right to remove a letter of reprimand from our personnel files after three years. (This is a right we currently enjoy on the longstanding shared understanding that letters of reprimand are issued for minor infractions, and they are not a form of discipline.)

• CSU management has also rejected many of our positive proposals, including our proposal to expand parental leave (from 10 weeks to a full semester), expand sabbatical leave (from a 12% to 20% minimum percentage awarded among the pool of eligible faculty), put in place voluntary restorative justice processes when workplace harm occurs, accommodate faculty with disabilities in a timely manner, and so on.

The list of “take-backs” goes on – even as Gov. Newson announced a proposed 7% increase (of $356.7 million) in new, ongoing funds to the CSU system. (If we include tuition increases imposed on our students by management, the new ongoing funds to be added to the current base budget of the CSU total $557 million!)

But look, we are determined not to let CSU management’s insulting proposals distract us from staying laser-focused on building the strongest contract ever – one that respects our academic freedom in the era of AI, honors our increasingly onerous workloads, compensates us fairly, and protects us from losing work and other essential workplace rights and basic protections.

We want to know, colleagues:

• How you are feeling about the bargaining proposals (ours and theirs);

• Which of CFA’s proposals (that you can see at: www.cfabargaining.org) are most important to you, and what you’d be willing to talk to your colleagues about, possibly withhold your labor in order to win, and otherwise be involved in the fight to achieve.

• Please email us this week: llewis@calfac.org and mtalcott@calfac.org.

• Come see us at Unity Wednesdays this Wednesday, February 4, by the library at noon. Molly will be there to hear your concerns, your hopes, and your commitments in our struggle to win this bargaining campaign!

And finally, please join our Tuesday evening Bargaining Town Hall (2/3/26 from 6-7:30 p.m.) where we will discuss management’s proposals, and CFA’s as well, by registering here.

We want to hear from you! This is our union, and we are only as strong and brilliant as the voices that are in the conversation, and the people in our movement!

In solidarity,

Libby Lewis and Molly Talcott
CFA-LA Bargaining Representatives