Host - Jessica Greenwell
Members of the California Faculty Association staging a series of one day strikes on CSU campuses began their picketing at Cal Poly Pomona Monday. KVCR’s Tony Lopez was there.
Reporter - Toni Lopez
The CFA is a Cal State University Union which represents approximately 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches across the system. Members were picketing at Red Gum Lane and Kellogg Drive, streets that are near that campus’s main entrance. Dr. Nicholas Von Glahn is the CFA Chapter President at Cal Poly Pomona, as well as a department chair and professor of Psychology. His goal with the strike is to show the CSU that their staff deserves better compensation and working conditions.
Dr. Von Glahn
The CSU management has money and they show that by funding the boardroom with campus president raises of 20, 25, 29% and that same period the faculty got a general salary increase of 7 point one percent.
Toni Lopez
Rachel Hill is one of the picket leaders at the strike and an assistant professor of history at Cal Poly Pomona. She shared that the contract that the CFA has proposed to the CSU also aims to help students.
Rachel Hill
There are a number of aspects of our labor proposals that management has refused to engage with, which include things like hiring more mental health counselors for students, who sometimes have to wait weeks, if not months to see a mental health provider even when they are in severe crisis.
Toni Lopez
Hill's own experience with her time as a professor also drives her reason for striking.
Rachel Hill
I started here in 2020, right in the middle of a global pandemic. When I started I could barely afford my rent, but it was it was doable. Since then, my rent’s gone up $500 a month. And I'm not alone here, and I'm an assistant professor. And on an assistant professor salary, I am not only not paying back my student loans, I am actually going into debt just to live here and perform my basic job duties.
Toni Lopez
Three more strikes from the CFA are set for December 5 at San Francisco State, December 6 at CSU L.A. and December 7 at Sacramento State. For KVCR News, I'm Tony Lopez in Pomona.
