Author Archives: billmohr

The CFA Strike Starts Today — No Rain Delay!

January 22, 2024 – 1:39 pm

An Historic Benchmark: The Largest Ever Union Strike at any U.S. Academic Institution

This morning I was out on the picket line, protesting the insult of a pay cut by the Chancellor’s Office of California State University. They would claim that their imposition of a five percent pay raise adequately addresses the inflation that has ravaged our incomes the past two years.

I’ll grant that it was a damp, chilly, and at times rainy morning, but I was surprised by the absence of several colleagues on the picket line and can only hope that they are not betraying the effort and sacrifices made by those who understand that only collective action will alter things.

The only faculty who would have an excuse for staying home would be at San Diego State. San Diego had a major downpour today, with 2.7 inches falling there. Wind speeds up to 48 miles per hour were reported in Imperial Beach. The 5 Freeway near downtown was flooded. Water up to three feet high forced people — both adults and children — to flee to the second floors of buildings.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/weather/story/2024-01-21/heres-how-much-rain-fell-in-20-san-diego-county-communities-by-8-a-m-on-sunday

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/22/cal-state-faculty-stage-23-campus-strike-and-cancel-classes-00136973

***********************

Gary Griswold, a colleague who was on the picket line with me this morningG, has given me permission to disseminate a statement he wrote about the strike. here it is:

One of my colleagues, Dr. Gary Griswold, worked up the following explanation of the strike, which he has given me permission to share with you. Professor Griswold, as he notes, received his first two degrees from CSU Long Beach, so he has a long institutional memory. I thank him for permission to distribute this statement.

From the desk of Dr. Gary Griswold:

“I would like to give you some context for the strike.

“Faculty play the pivotal role in the University’s core mission to provide a high-quality education to an increasingly diverse California. Yet, while faculty continue to invest their time and energy needed to promote student success, they find themselves struggling to support their families, afford housing, and make student loan payments.

“But to have the best learning conditions, you need to have the best employment conditions for faculty. Instead, the CSU Board of Trustees and the CSU Chancellor’s Office are currently raising student tuition by an alarming 34% over the next five years, have raised the salaries of CSU Presidents up to 29%, and hired a new Chancellor whose salary, combined with housing and car allowances, amounts to close to a million dollars of yearly compensation.

“All this, while they just walked early during negotiations with faculty and imposed a measly 5% raise, which doesn’t even cover inflation, claiming to be too impoverished to agree to our union’s proposal to increase faculty pay, limit class sizes, and hire more counselors/advisors for students.

“The total cost of our union’s proposal would be around 386 million dollars. That sounds like a lot of money until you find out that CSU system is an extremely healthy and lucrative corporation with an ever-increasing surplus that surpasses 6 billion dollars.

“I emphasize that this strike is not just about a faculty pay raise, but also about our students. We have proposed, and the CSU Administration has rejected, increased counseling and advising services for students as well as limitation on the continual increasing of class enrollment sizes. This last issue has a direct effect on how much individualized attention students may receive from faculty.

“I myself and a product of the CSU system. I earned both a BA (1987) and an MA (1989) in English right here at CSULB. In my more than 40 years at this campus, first as an undergraduate, then a graduate student, temporary staff member, temporary lecturer/instructor, and finally, in 2002 as a full-time professor, I have witnessed a gradual decline in civil, respectful treatment of the faculty by both CSULB and system-wide (Chancellor’s Office) administration, especially in the last decade or so.

“What was once the largest, most respected, and affordable system of public higher education ever seen, held up throughout the world as a model of investment in the future of our students, and subsequently, California, has turned in to a corrupt, top-down tyrannical corporation, whose only interest is in increasing profits at the expense CSU students, faculty, staff, and all California tax-payers.

“Thank you for your understanding and support.”

— Dr. Gary Griswold
Department of English
CSULB

Professor William Mohr seconds this statement.

Bill Mohr, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of English
CSULB

As I prepare to go to the picket line tomorrow morning, I have quickly improvised a portion of a song lyric:

I put my money where my mouth is —
I’m on strike and I won’t get paid.
The chancellor collects her salary
for spewing a hypocritical tirade.

She gets paid a million a year
to offer faculty a cut in pay
The governor says she’s doing fine
“Cajole, ignore, and egregiously delay.”

“Remind them it’s a privilege
to teach the young at a college level;
And emphasize their gratitude
Shows best when they begin to grovel.”

Yes, faculty deserve no better
than wages now worth less than yesterday
Let them eat margarine, not butter
And feel humiliated next payday.

The strike might be a big mistake.
The CSU has wealth beyond belief
and sleeps on it when we’re awake — .
For once, though, the bite of our teeth!!!!

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Cauleen Smith’s Los Angeles Cinematic Baedeker: “The Wanda Coleman Songbook”

January 21, 2024 – 10:32 am

Sunday, January 21, 2024

The Arts & Leisure section of today’s New York’s includes a full-page article on a new film about Los Angeles: “THE WANDA COLEMAN SONGBOOK.” Since Cauleen Smith’s film is having its debut screening at the 52 Walker Gallery in New York City, I can’t comment on the film, but I do want to call attention both to this article about this filmmaker and urge all of us in Los Angeles to celebrate long-distance with this posthumous cinematic and musical explication of one of this city’s most respectfully cherished poets. Just two months ago, Beyond Baroque named its downstairs performance space in her honor. It is, in fact, the space in which Wanda Coleman and Kate Braverman served to inaugurate Beyond Baroque’s move from West Washington Blvd. to Venice Blvd. in the fall of 1980. While Friday night readings and other events had already been taking place at the Old Venice City Hall for several months, the reading by Braverman and Coleman was listed on BB’s schedule as the “Gala Grand Opening Poetry Reading.”

“POETRY AMONG MILES OF STRIP MALLS” (My comment: Is that really the best The NY Times could do as a title for this article?)

In lieu of being able to view Smith’s film, here is a link to a clip of her talking about the power of art:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauleen_Smith

As for article in the New York Times, I would have appreciated less empty space in the photograph of the author so that Siddhartha Mitter, the journalist, could have alerted readers to specific titles of Coleman’s poetry, such as the recent volume edited by Terrance Hayes, WICKED ENCHANTMENT.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/06/12/the-wicked-candor-of-wanda-coleman/

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“Vogliamo Tutto” (“We Want Everything” — or at least 12%): CFA Goes On Strike!

January 9, 2024 – 6:37 pm

Tuesday, January 9, 2024 — A FIVE PERCENT “RAISE” IS A PAY CUT! ON STRIKE! ON STRIKE!

As I mention in an earlier post, one of the books I picked up at the PAMLA conference, in Portland, this past October was Nanni Balestrini’s We Want Everything.” Hyperbole, quoted chirpily.

With the CFA’s call for a five day system-wide strike of the CSU by the faculty for the first week of the spring semester, however, I think it’s appropriate that I dust off an old piece that I banged out several years ago in the weeks before a strike ended up being called off at the last minute because the Chancellor’s Office decided that the right thing to do was to give us the cost-of-living increase we deserved..

This time the Cnacellor’s Office of the CSU system has decided that a five percent pay raise is sufficient to mitigate the erosion of our paychecks by the massive inflation of the past two years. The faculty bluntly disagrees. The CO is imposing a pay cut on us. Let’s make it clear that is exactly what is happening. The CO is not offering to increase our pay. Rather, the CO wants us to accept a pay cut.

BRAIN FACTORY

I’m striking at the brain factory
‘cuz the Chancellor’s refractory.
Five percent’s a drop in the bucket.
Seven percent barely cuts it.

The Chancellor loves to heap the praise
But clams up tight when we want a raise.
All we’re asking is the cost of living
To compensate for what we’re giving.

If knowledge is prosperity,
then why so much austerity?
Five percent is a drop in the bucket.
Seven percent barely cuts it.

I’m striking at the brain factory.
Sublime, intellectual glory
won’t buy a house or pay the rent.
It affords enough to buy a tent.

Five percent is a drop in the bucket.
We say COLA, and they say, “F–k it.”
I’m striking at the brain factory
‘cuz the Chancellor’s refractory.

“Vogliamo Tutto!”
“Vogliamo Tutto!”
“Vogliamo Tutto!”
“Vogliamo Tutto!”
“Vogliamo Tutto!”
“Vogliamo Tutto!”
“Vogliamo Tutto!”
“Vogliamo Tutto!”

*****************************************

(Reprint addendum)

Friday, December 22, 2023

One month from now, either a decent contract === or on strike!!! (SEE ABOVE)

The leadership of the California Faculty Association has called on the entire faculty at all campuses of the California State University system to go on strike during the first week of classes in the Spring semester, 2024. The CFA wants to obtain for both tenured and adjunct faculty a salary commensurate with the skills and knowledge we bring to the training of the future work force. The five percent pay raise offered by the Chancellor’s Office is a pathetic joke, given the extraordinary inflation that has undermined the purchase power of our income in the past eighteen months. The fact that inflation seems recently to have leveled off does not mean that faculty have somehow magically found themselves on an even economic keel again. We are still reeling from the enormous increases in everything from rent to food to car insurance. And many of us rent. How could we possibly afford to buy a house in Southern California, where almost half of the 450,000 students enrolled in the CSU system study.

Quite bluntly, what the CSU is offering amounts to a pay cut. There’s no other way to put it. In point of fact, the California Faculty Association is not asking for a pay raise. Instead, we want to put a stop to the constant erosion of our salaries; and if CO needs a reminder of why we do not trust them, let us consider how CSU faculty were promised a four percent raise after the last contract was voted on and approved by the CFA (though I myself voted “no,” since I suspected a double-cross was in the works). What happened to that four percent? Funny you should ask. It was reduced to three percent because the legislature and the governor thought that trimming one percent from the union approved agreement would send the CFA a signal of how little power they have. Well, we have no desire to be sucker-punched again and we intend to show you how much power we do have.

CSU faculty are of course not the only workers who have felt the impingements of inflation. Other workers have flexed their muscle, and the outcome has been a mitigation of the inroads that inflation has made on their income. As a quick review of other employers who have recognized the extent that inflation has hampered the ability of workers to make ends meet, here are some other results:

July, 2023
“United Airlines pilots will get immediate wage-rate increases of 13.8% to 18.7%, depending on the type of plane they fly, followed by four smaller annual raises”

Full-time United Parcel Service (UPS) drivers got at least a ten percent pay raise this year in their new five year contract.

Here is the pay raise schedule that was agreed upon by the United Teachers Los Angeles:
3% retroactive to July 1, 2022
4% retroactive to Jan. 1
3% effective July 1, 2023
4% effective Jan. 1, 2024
3% effective July 1, 2024
4% effective Jan. 1, 2025

Why should CSU professors accept only a five percent raise in 2023-2024 when a high school teacher is getting seven percent between July 1, 2023 and January 1, 2024? That raise is in addition to a retroactive raise meant to compensate teachers for the extraordinary amount of inflation in 2022-2023.

Once again, let me reiterate the actual jump in the cost of living.

CNN BUSINESS
“Inflation may be cooling — but drivers can’t seem to catch. break” by Elisabeth Buchwald, 8:08 a.m. August 12, 2023

“It will cost 19.5 percent more to repair your car now than it did a year ago, according to July’s Consumer Price Index report, released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. …. (C)ar insurance (is) up 17.8 percent from a year ago.”

The CO has claimed that it has “deep respect” for the work that faculty do, but that “rapidly escalating costs of operation” preclude any pay raise beyond five percent. Their recalcitrance has a long history. In my own case, even after a half-dozen years of work following my promotion to full professor, my actual income has only minimally budged from the salary I was offered when I was appointed an assistant professor at California State University, Long Beach in 2006. The effects of inflation over the past 18 years have been that devastating.

CSU Faculty have given the Chancellor’s Office a more than fair warning. This past semester included a one-day strike at four different campuses. Apparently, the CO believes that one day is the most that we are willing to walk on a picket line. We’ll see how things stand once the second week of classes start in late January and still no students are learning what they paid tuition for.

In the meantime, the money that was promised faculty as a very small raise starting in July, 2023 is five months overdue. Brotman Hall claims that it takes considerable time for each person’s paycheck to be calculated, but my guess is that by stalling the payment of this money, the CO has used the funds to invest in short-timer, high interest loans, thereby swelling its coffers through the use of money we have already earned.

In case you somehow think that the CO’s accountants don’t know how the capitalist game is played, think again. When students pay their fees in advance of the semester, that money doesn’t just sit around twiddling its manicured thumbs. That liquidity is used to make more cash ASAP. It’s the education business, and the business of education pays its administrators very well. Those who do the educating are asked to settle for “deep respect.”

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Bill Mohr – Featured Poet in TRAMPOLINE magazine

January 9, 2024 – 6:27 pm

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

I just found out that I am the “featured poet” on Trampoline magazine’s website. The two poems will be part of the upcoming issue (number 21), which will be posted in the not too distant future.
https://www.trampolinepoetry.com

I recommend the editor’s poems, by the way. Take a look at Justin Lacour’s love sonnets.

Poetry Feature – Justin Lacour

*****

As a background note for the pair of poems in TRAMPOLINE, I wrote “Standing Fan” first, and sent it off to him. I had been in an earlier issue of this magazine, but hadn’t sent Justin anything since then. By I heard back from him that he wanted to publish the poem, I had written another poem about meditation and asked him if he would be interested in looking at a companion piece for the poem he’d accepted. Normally, I wouldn’t bother an editor with such a request. It’s rather rude and aggressive to make such a request. “One should be grateful that the editor accepted one poem and then just wait to submit another” is my general rule of practice. But “The Homily” seemed to fit with “Standing Fan” so comfortably that I took a deep breath and sent my inquiry. Justin was willing to look at the additional poem, and then ended up agreeing rather quickly that the two poems went together.

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Two Maverick Presses — Punk Hostage and University of Hell

January 6, 2024 – 9:40 pm

One of the small presses I have admired the most the past twenty years is PUNK HOSTAGE PRESS, which was founded by IRIS BERRY and A. RAZOR as a communal D.I.Y. Literary project. The authors who have contributed their writing to this loose affiliation of unremunerated usurpers of normatively include:

PLEASANT GEHMAN
RICHARD MODIANO
S.A GRIFFIN
JACK GRISHAM
MAISHA Z. JOHNSON
A.D. WINANS
SHAWNA KENNEY

If PUNK HOSTAGE PRESS could have a house band to play at publication parties, it would be the New York Dolls. As far as I know, nobody has ever put together a tribute band for the New York Dolls, which might be a quick way to test their lineage as purveyors of audacity. I can imagine someone doing that for the Clash, for instance, but not the Sex Pistols or the New York Dolls. My point is that this press still has an “edge” to it and its roster gives off an odor that immediately makes them unfit for academy consideration.

Other presses that have emerged this century that could be aligned with Punk Hostage include the University of Hell Press, which has its roots in poetry performance scenes in Washington, D.C. and San Diego, California. Now based in Portland, Oregon, I had the pleasure of talking to the founder of University of Hell Press at the PAMLA conference in October, 2023. Greg Gerding started as a poet, and one of his press’s first titles was his own LOSER MAKES GOOD. His early collection of poems is about what one might expect of a 22 year old who is overly influenced by Charles Bukowski’s writing. However, Gerding’s self-portrait of alcoholic stupor is one that would probably have won grading admiration from Bukowski. The “Drunk” poem is maybe the best one on that subject by any young writer in recent years.

One of the most interesting books published by Gerding was a collection of erasure poetry, but the technique had a target: the patriarchy. The book predates the emergence of the “metro” movement, and as such has an understated ferocity in appropriating masculine “literacy.” re-registering the refusal to accept what’s gone down in history as ineligible for transmutations.

Gerding’s long display tables at PAMLA also included “I’ll Show You Mine,” which is not a book that Gerding published. Gerding instead was the editor as well as the interviewer who got women and men to open up about their sex lives. The transcribed monologues, replete with astute self-recriminations, indicate that Gerding would probably be a good therapist, since many of those interviewed are candid about the kinds of abuse they suffered in learning how to be affectionately intimate with another person. There is relatively little emphasis on actual genital interaction: words such as clitoris or penis (or its slang signifiers) are only occasionally invoked in the accounts of “everyday people” who “talk candidly about love, sex, and Intimacy.” In general, the monologues exhibit a level of trust in the interviewer that exudes an authentic intimacy; I myself have not been as honestly intimate with some of the people I’ve been close to in my life as these thirty people are in allowing the insights of their memories to be overheard in “I’ll Show You Mine.”

The New York Dolls

PAMLA conference

PM Press had a table
Mother Foucault’s Bookshop
Broadview
Norton

CATARACT PRESS

Greg Gerding

Various books, including “I’ll Show You Mine,” which is not a book that Gerding published. Gerding instead was the editor as well as the interviewer who got women and men to open up about their sex lives,

By chance, I was reading several of the books that I had purchased from Gerding. HIs early collection of poems is about what one might expect of a 22 year old who is overly influenced by Charles Bukowski’s writing. However, Gelding’s self-portrait of alcoholic stupor is one that would probably have won grading admiration from Bukowski. “Drunk” poem.

The third book I spent some time with

Of pornography and patriarchy

John Got — University of Wisconsin La Cross
MLNP

The Sexual Life of Catherine M.

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PICO & SEPULVEDA: The Imaginary, Forestalled Anthology of L.A. Poets

January 4, 2024 – 8:44 am

THE ALLEY CAT READINGS AND “PICO & SEPULVEDA”

By now, the Dr. Demento theme song has begun to fade from the memory of all but a small continent of those born between 1942 and 1957. I suppose there are a few outliers who could identify the song, but he core of those who could correlate the song and the radio show are in that fifteen year stretch. In a similar manner, only those born in that period are likely to have attended or been friends with poets who read at the Alley Cat reading series.

Jack Grapes and Michael Andrews founded Bombshelter Press in the mid-1970s that focused on poets who were reading and publishing their poems in the vibrant magazine scene in Los Angeles, which included BACHY, BEYOND BAROQUE, INVISIBLE CITY, MOMENTUM, and RARA AVIS. One of their undertakings was a series of anthologies that drew upon the roster of the poets who were reading at the restaurant in Hermosa Beach called ALLEY CAT.

In November and December, 1975, the anthologies included work by the editors as well as Kate Ellen Braverman, James Krusoe, Dennis Ellman, Michael C. Ford, and Eloise Klein Healy. Over two dozen additional poets read at this venue on the last Sunday of the month, a few of whom went on to gain national reputations as writers or performers. In particular, one should note the inclusion of Bob Flanagan as one of the featured readers. At that point, Bob was only 23 years old, but he had matured at an astonishing rate since the first public appearance in front of his peers at an unfinished office tower building in downtown Los Angeles.

It should come as no surprise that a fair number of the poets never kept at it and quickly faded into unpublished anonymity. The list of those who persevered, however, is quite intriguing: Frances Dean Smith, who deserved a term as Ocean Park’s poet laureate; Barry Simons, who had a documentary film made about him by fellow poet Rod Bradley; Bonnie Desjardins and Chris Desjardins, who edited an important anthology at that time called BONGO CHALICE; the late Bob Greenfield, who won a NEA Creative Writing grant in the early 1990s; Rita Shantiris, whose work went on to appear in several magazines, including Poetry; and K. Curtis Lyle, whose books have been printed by Beyond Baroque. Other poets who read included Jay Jenkins, who went on to serve as the lawyer for the band X; Michael Tracy, a visual artist who designed Jim Krusoe’s first full-length book; and Peter Kriener and and Carol Marsh, who were significant participants in the Beyond Baroque workshop. Rounding out this are poets such Elliot Fried (who taught at CSULB for several decades and edited a couple of anthologies of poets aligned with the Stand Up movement); Nancy Shiffrin, Roger Taus, Dan Ives, Ben Pleasants, Loren Paul Caplin, and Linda Backlund. Almost 50 years later, Shiffrin and Taus are still writing, which should serve as a grace note of the longevity of this scene.

Unfortunately, the one book that should have been published in the mid-1970s in Los Angeles that did not ever happen was PICO & SEPULVEDA, which did get announced and begin assembling poems for, but never appeared as a finished book. An anthology that focused on two dozen of the above poets would have been a major contribution to defining the Los Angeles scene at that time. I would go so far as to say that it would be interesting to see what a poet critic such as Ken Funsten would come up with if he were to sit down and go through books and magazines published between 1972 and 1976 and work up an imaginary table of contents for such an anthology. The follow-up challenge, of course, would be to write an introduction to that table of contents that contextualized the absence of a dozen poets from the book, including Ron Koertge, Gerald Locklin, Paul Vangelisti, John Thomas, William Pillin, Bert Meyers, Wanda Coleman, Joseph Hansen, John Harris, Holly Prado, Harry E. Northup, and Charles Bukowski.

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“Just in Time” — Live music with Paul Vangelisti’s reading

January 3, 2024 – 8:17 am

Wednesday, January 3, 2024 — ONE WEEK FROM TODAY!

“Just in Time” — Paul Vangelisti and Robyn’s Nest

During the pandemic, Harry E. Northup made use of the production facilities at MPTF (Motion Picture and Television Fund), where he lives and continues writing as one of those rare actors with a substantial career who is also a superb poet, to produce a poetry show that is broadcast through the internet.

Because so many of the residents of MPTF are elderly, the facility has been vigilant in isolating itself from the ravages of the pandemic. Although the virus is still causing havoc, it has receded enough so that live performances have returned to MPTF. Anyone who lives within driving distance of MFPT should make their way to this venue for this distinctive combination of poetry and music.

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Happy New Year! — STAN SZELEST’s rendition of “Whole Lot Of Shakin’ Going On”

December 31, 2023 – 1:14 pm

December 31, 2023

Among the many unexpected things that have come to pass in my life, the past 18 years I have worked at CSULB is certainly among the least likely. Thirty odd years ago, no one in Los Angeles was naming me as the one most likely to take the late Gerry Locklin’s place at CSULB. By that point, Gerry had been at Long Beach for almost 30 years, and while he would keep teaching there until almost the end of the first decade of the next century, his spot on the faculty would have to be filled by someone. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to his successor.

The only sad part about my own upcoming final years at CSULB is that no one will be hired to replace me. The College of Liberal Arts, as far as I can tell, has no inclination to hire someone who can teach both literature and creative writing to graduate and undergraduate students. So it goes. There’s not much I can do to change the culture of an institution that regards WC Williams’s dictum of “Only the imagination is real” as a heretical objection to the goals of perpetual modernization.

In the meantime, though, let us not cease contributing what we can to our critiques of contemporary social life. In celebrating our own affirmations, let us also not forget those who gave their all in lifting up our spirits in the past.

As this New Year’s Eve theme song, I nominate Stan Szelest’s rendition of “Whole Lot Of Shakin’ Going On.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Szelest

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LIVESTREAMED — The 50th Annual New Year’s Day Reading at St. Mark’s (NYC)

December 28, 2023 – 6:20 am

LIVESTREAMED — The New Year’s Day Marathon (NYDM) of Poetry from the St. Mark’s Poetry Project (2024)

https://www.poetryproject.org/marathon

Beyond Baroque, in Venice, California, and The Poetry Project, in NYC, are the two oldest major alternative poetry sites in the United States. Both have been operating for more than a half-century; 2024 will mark the 50th time that a mass reading has taken place to kick off the new year. The announcement of this year’s event is full of well-earned selfie wiz: “NYDM is … a mutually agreed upon fever-dream …. (of) like-minded freaks.”

The Poetry Project’s 50th Annual New Year’s Day Marathon will begin at 11AM on January 1st and go to about midnight. The event will be divided into two parts: 11AM–5PM and 6PM–midnight.

The entire event will also be livestreamed. Livestream tickets are donation-based, $5–15 suggested. Separate tickets for each part.

Featured poets include:
Edmund Berrigan
Don Yorty
Greg Masters
Sarah Schulman
Todd Colby
John Godfrey
Brenda Coultas
Eleni Sikelianos
Lee Ann Brown
Patricia Spears Jones
Erica Hunt
Edwin Torres with Sean Meehan
Anselm Berrigan
CAConrad
Fred Moten
Cecilia Vicuña
Kim Rosenfield
Eileen Myles with Ryan Sawyer and Steve Gunn
Karen Finley
Rachel Levitsky
Chelsea Manning
Anne Waldman
Jim Behrle

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CFA calls for System-Wide CSU Strike on January 22, 2024

December 22, 2023 – 6:06 am

Friday, December 22, 2023

One month from now, either a decent contract === or on strike!!!

The leadership of the California Faculty Association has called on the entire faculty at all campuses of the California State University system to go on strike during the first week of classes in the Spring semester, 2024. The CFA wants to obtain for both tenured and adjunct faculty a salary commensurate with the skills and knowledge we bring to the training of the future work force. The five percent pay raise offered by the Chancellor’s Office is a pathetic joke, given the extraordinary inflation that has undermined the purchase power of our income in the past eighteen months. The fact that inflation seems recently to have leveled off does not mean that faculty have somehow magically found themselves on an even economic keel again. We are still reeling from the enormous increases in everything from rent to food to car insurance. And many of us rent. How could we possibly afford to buy a house in Southern California, where almost half of the 450,000 students enrolled in the CSU system study.

Quite bluntly, what the CSU is offering amounts to a pay cut. There’s no other way to put it. In point of fact, the California Faculty Association is not asking for a pay raise. Instead, we want to put a stop to the constant erosion of our salaries; and if CO needs a reminder of why we do not trust them, let us consider how CSU faculty were promised a four percent raise after the last contract was voted on and approved by the CFA (though I myself voted “no,” since I suspected a double-cross was in the works). What happened to that four percent? Funny you should ask. It was reduced to three percent because the legislature and the governor thought that trimming one percent from the union approved agreement would send the CFA a signal of how little power they have. Well, we have no desire to be sucker-punched again and we intend to show you how much power we do have.

CSU faculty are of course not the only workers who have felt the impingements of inflation. Other workers have flexed their muscle, and the outcome has been a mitigation of the inroads that inflation has made on their income. As a quick review of other employers who have recognized the extent that inflation has hampered the ability of workers to make ends meet, here are some other results:

July, 2023
“United Airlines pilots will get immediate wage-rate increases of 13.8% to 18.7%, depending on the type of plane they fly, followed by four smaller annual raises”

Full-time United Parcel Service (UPS) drivers got at least a ten percent pay raise this year in their new five year contract.

Here is the pay raise schedule that was agreed upon by the United Teachers Los Angeles:
3% retroactive to July 1, 2022
4% retroactive to Jan. 1
3% effective July 1, 2023
4% effective Jan. 1, 2024
3% effective July 1, 2024
4% effective Jan. 1, 2025

Why should CSU professors accept only a five percent raise in 2023-2024 when a high school teacher is getting seven percent between July 1, 2023 and January 1, 2024? That raise is in addition to a retroactive raise meant to compensate teachers for the extraordinary amount of inflation in 2022-2023.

Once again, let me reiterate the actual jump in the cost of living.

CNN BUSINESS
“Inflation may be cooling — but drivers can’t seem to catch. break” by Elisabeth Buchwald, 8:08 a.m. August 12, 2023

“It will cost 19.5 percent more to repair your car now than it did a year ago, according to July’s Consumer Price Index report, released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. …. (C)ar insurance (is) up 17.8 percent from a year ago.”

The CO has claimed that it has “deep respect” for the work that faculty do, but that “rapidly escalating costs of operation” preclude any pay raise beyond five percent. Their recalcitrance has a long history. In my own case, even after a half-dozen years of work following my promotion to full professor, my actual income has only minimally budged from the salary I was offered when I was appointed an assistant professor at California State University, Long Beach in 2006. The effects of inflation over the past 18 years have been that devastating.

CSU Faculty have given the Chancellor’s Office a more than fair warning. This past semester included a one-day strike at four different campuses. Apparently, the CO believes that one day is the most that we are willing to walk on a picket line. We’ll see how things stand once the second week of classes start in late January and still no students are learning what they paid tuition for.

In the meantime, the money that was promised faculty as a very small raise starting in July, 2023 is five months overdue. Brotman Hall claims that it takes considerable time for each person’s paycheck to be calculated, but my guess is that by stalling the payment of this money, the CO has used the funds to invest in short-timer, high interest loans, thereby swelling its coffers through the use of money we have already earned.

In case you somehow think that the CO’s accountants don’t know how the capitalist game is played, think again. When students pay their fees in advance of the semester, that money doesn’t just sit around twiddling its manicured thumbs. That liquidity is used to make more cash ASAP. It’s the education business, and the business of education pays its administrators very well. Those who do the educating are asked to settle for “deep respect.”

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