Reporting time-off during the strike
On Friday, February 2, many faculty received an email from Elizabeth Heise, AVP for Faculty Affairs, inquiring about your participation in the strike on January 22nd.
Unit 3 faculty, represented by CFA, are generally not responsible for an hourly accounting of our whereabouts. Our flexibility in the work schedule, despite often being overworked, is one of the few advantages to our work as systemically underpaid professionals. Even instructional faculty teaching face-to-face classes enjoy flexibility per academic senate policy with the ability to conduct up-to-25% of our class sessions remotely. Many faculty regularly work without pay over off-contract periods, on weekends, and during holiday breaks to meet our workload demands and serve our students.
With regard to management’s message, we encourage faculty to see the message for what it is: a misleading intimidation tactic geared toward suppressing our strike escalation activities in the coming term. At a time when faculty pay has fallen well behind inflation (while administrators have enjoyed generous raises), management would like to deny us a day of pay, even as we work many more hours than we are paid for, and our working conditions do not conform neatly to hourly schedules.
We acknowledge just how demoralizing it is to receive a clearly threatening and retaliatory email while we’re still adjusting to the new semester. Please note, faculty chairs and faculty directors are not administration and can provide you with additional guiding information on regular, normal reporting practices in your department.
We have put in a formal request on Friday, 2/2, to Cal State LA’s administration to request details on how it was determined to identify faculty who participated in the strike on January 22nd. We have not yet received a response, and will share any details received with the membership.
If you have any questions, or feel like your protected union activity is being singled out, please contact our Faculty Rights Team: Molly Talcott at mtalcott@calfac.org and Marcelle Alvarado malvarado@calfac.org. As always, please use your non-CSU/edu email when contacting the union to make sure communications are confidential.