CFA-LA Response to Management's Strikebreaking Messages
Know your strike rights - you are in a protected bargaining unit.
December 1, 2023
Faculty Colleagues,
Tonight, Cal State LA administration sent out a potential strikebreaking email to dissuade you from participating in the faculty strike at Cal State LA next Wednesday, December 6th. Interim Provost Amy Bippus wrote, “If you choose to strike, please inform your dean, associate dean, or executive director that you were out on strike or use the dock code in PeopleSoft at the conclusion of the strike.“
This is A TRAP! You have the legal right to strike and you DO NOT have to inform your chair or any campus administrator that you plan to strike. You are also not obligated to report any absences for when you’re on strike. In fact, the only way management can dock your pay is if you or someone else reports that you didn’t work that day. If you are pressured by anyone to admit you are going on strike or were on strike, please contact us immediately.
Know Your Strike Rights
We’ve put together a helpful document to clarify your rights when going on strike. While I encourage you to download and read the entire doc, I will include several key points below:
You have the right to strike! All Unit 3 faculty are protected under our CFA-CSU Collective Bargaining Agreement.
A legal strike withholds ALL labor.
You cannot lose your job for participating in a protected strike, or picket.
Your benefits will not be interrupted as a result of participating in the strike.
You are entitled to return to your job when the strike ends.
It is illegal to be retaliated against for participating in protected union activities.
If you suspect retaliation activities, document and contact your union rep, or faculty rights chair.
It is illegal for management, or administration, to inquire about your protected union activities.
You do not need to notify the employer that you are going to join the picket line or strike. The union has provided the required notification per the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act as outlined by the Public Employment Relations Board.
Students, too, are receiving confusing, discouraging, and morally vacuous messages from management. It’s imperative that we – the faculty, who have relationships with our students that administrators simply do not – communicate with our students that this contract fight is also for them. We must remind them that Faculty Working Conditions are Student Learning Conditions. Let them know we’re fighting for pedagogically appropriate class sizes, for more mental health counselors, for pay equity to ensure that Lecturer faculty who teach the majority of our students make a living wage, and for a greater share of the CSU’s vast financial reserves to be directed toward the classroom before investment accounts. We’re fighting for the support systems they need and deserve to thrive as students.
We are not alone in our fight for dignity and respect in our workplace, and the Teamsters and federation of labor unions from across Los Angeles County will be with us next Wednesday on the picket line. This critical fact–that our strike has been authorized by the Los Angeles Federation of Labor–gives union members of every other union the right not to cross the picket line. Remember that many of our students, their families, and their communities work in unionized professions. We would uplift their rights as workers, and we expect them to do the same for us.
We are now being subjected to the same tactics other universities and major corporations use to intimidate workers from striking. Fortunately, they didn’t work on UTLA (LAUSD teachers), SEIU 99 (LAUSD staff), AAUP-AFT Rutgers (faculty), WGA (screen writers), SAG-AFTRA (actors), SEIU-UHW (Kaiser healthcare workers), and UAW (autoworkers), all of who went on strike in 2023 and won major concessions from their bosses. And they won’t work on us!
While we may not be surprised, we continue to be disappointed in the amoral leadership of CSU managers, who encourage picket line crossing and ignore the stakes of this strike for all CSU community members, especially students. Nonetheless, such messages remind us that, to paraphrase the late poet and public university professor June Jordan, we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for. We maintain that some of the most educational experiences happen on labor picket lines, and we invite students to celebrate our commitment to educational justice with us.
See you on the picket line! Sign up here for a shift: Strike Shift Form
Sincerely,
Anthony Ratcliff & the CFA-LA Executive Board
