08/15/2023
Ok, emails are rolling in from faculty. Many faculty are shooting me a quick email just to say “Done!” to my requests, but some other faculty have some good questions about a variety of things. I decided I’d post the answers to social media just in case other were curious.
Two different people today asked “Where did the 12% GSI demand come from?” which is a great question! So here’s my answer:
“If you recall, the union sent out a bargaining survey this past spring. We had over 7,000 members from the 23 campuses respond. On the salary question we had a HUGE variety of answers. One person said we should demand a 100% raise (seriously!) and 2 people said we get paid enough (also serious). The rest of the answers were somewhere between those. There were a lot of responses between 8% and 29%.
Many people cited 8% because that was the rate of inflation last year (actually 9.1% at the height of last year). Many people cited 29% due to several of the CSU Presidents getting a 29% raise last year (including now retired President Hutchinson). So the 12% figure is actually the average rate of all the responses from our 7,000 respondents who filled out the survey.
Having participated in bargaining, I can also give you son “unofficial” explanations. Some of our colleagues in more expensive markets are still unhappy with the 12%. Most notably, our San Francisco and LA Chapters. They firmly believe we should have asked for more. They point out that our raises have been so meager over the past decade compared to inflation that we’ve actually taken pay cuts every time we’ve accepted less. In particular, they say that if Administration can give themselves enormous raises (and add to their numbers), we should at least be demanding raises that help us stay a bit ahead of inflation.”
So there you go! Got other questions? Feel free to ask & I’ll do my best to answer!
