CSU strike averted after tentative agreement

Rosa Barrientos and Eric Medrano with Students for Quality Education rally at California State University, Sacramento, Calif., Monday, March 28, 2016, to demonstrate to the CSU administration that students will stand with faculty if they are forced to strike. key report released Monday calls on California State University to give faculty members the pay raises they've requested as the two sides prepare for a five-day strike if they can't reach an agreement. (Lezlie Sterling/The Sacramento Bee via AP) MAGS OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT (KCRA3, KXTV10, KOVR13, KUVS19, KMAZ31, KTXL40); MANDATORY CREDIT less Rosa Barrientos and Eric Medrano with Students for Quality Education rally at California State University, Sacramento, Calif., Monday, March 28, 2016, to demonstrate to the CSU administration that students will ... more Photo: Lezlie Sterling, AP Photo: Lezlie Sterling, AP Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close CSU strike averted after tentative agreement 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Negotiators for the California State University system and its faculty members have reached a tentative salary agreement, averting a five-day strike that was set to begin next week and would have affected 460,000 students across 23 campuses, the two sides said Thursday.

Details of the deal between CSU and the California Faculty Association will be released Friday. The announcement of an agreement comes on the heels of a neutral fact-finder’s report that found faculty members were entitled to a larger salary increase than the 2 percent raise that CSU officials had offered.

Union leaders postponed the strike set for next Wednesday through Friday and April 18-19, pending approval of the agreement by the union’s board and members. If approved, the deal will go before the CSU Board of Trustees at its May meeting.

The strike would have been the first of its kind in the university’s history. With 23,000 instructors, librarians, counselors and athletic coaches represented by the union, picket lines would have brought the campuses to a standstill.

The two sides negotiated for months trying to reach a contract for this academic year and next, but deadlocked in the fall. The state Public Employment Relations Board stepped in, and Bonnie Castrey, the neutral arbitrator, found last month that a 5 percent raise — the amount requested by the faculty association — would be most appropriate. She said CSU faculty were underpaid compared with instructors at similar universities.

CSU officials have said they couldn’t afford that large an increase. Castrey recommended spreading out the 5 percent increase over a year to minimize its effect on the university’s budget and said CSU should divert money from unspecified other projects to pay for it.

According to the union’s tabulations, 60 percent of instructors are temporary lecturers, many working part time, who earn an average of $28,000 a year. Full-time, tenured professors earn an average of $96,000 a year.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov