After nearly 18 months of failed bargaining, the California Faculty Association and the Cal State University met for a mediation session Thursday.
Mediation, the second step in a “statutory process” outlined in state labor laws, consists of a neutral third party joining the CFA and CSU at the negotiation table, said chair of the CFA bargaining team Andy Merrifield.
“The mediator acts as a sort of messenger,” Merrifield said. “The whole point is to get people to talk to each other.”
State-appointed mediator Tony Butka served during the session, according to the CFA website.
According to the union, no progress has been made in resolving key issues such as salary, benefits, workload, appointment, summer employment and more.
“We’re not asking for any take backs,” CSU spokesman Erik Fallis said. “We have proposed a couple of things that we think are common sense or that were recommended to us by the auditor of the state of California.”
A few proposals Fallis listed include having employees report outside employment in addition to holding meaningful evaluations of employees before they receive tenure employment.
Butka met individually and collectively with the parties, and Merrifield said mediation could take more than a single meeting to complete.
However, if Butka decides that settlement cannot be achieved through mediation, he will certify the dispute to continue to the next step: fact-finding.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Merrifield said.
Before the mediation session, Merrifield said information would not be released until either an agreement is reached or Butka moves negotiations to the next step.
The two sides have been negotiating a successor contract since the current agreement expired about 18 months ago.
The faculty union bargaining team walked out of a negotiation session with university administration on Nov. 18, 2011, according to a bargaining update on the CSU website.
That same day, CFA submitted a request for impasse, a legal step that leads to state-appointed mediation.
A day earlier, CFA members held a one-day strike at Cal State campuses Dominguez Hills and East Bay, shutting down classes at both schools.
The strikes were for equity pay increases for the 2008-09 and 2009-10 academic years.
Fallis said the union could not legally strike over anything still on the negotiating table.
Butka has served as a mediator in previous disputes between the two sides, according to the CFA website. Both CFA and CSU expressed hopes that mediation will help them to come to an agreement.
“Our intent is to settle the contract as quickly as possible,” Merrifield said. “The mediator is a tool to help with this. We are taking advantage of it.”
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