Faculty members in the 23-campus Cal State University system have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, with a walkout planned in the next few months should last-minute efforts to reach a salary agreement with administration fall short.

Leaders of the California Faculty Association, which represents more than 25,000 tenured and tenure-track faculty, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches, announced Wednesday that members would rather strike than give up on a 5 percent raise they’ve been demanding for months.

For the past six months of negotiations, the Long Beach-based Chancellor’s Office has stuck to its offer of a 2 percent raise.

“Our employer has decided what the faculty is worth and it turns out we’re not worth much to them,” said CFA President Jennifer Eagan during a media conference call from San Jose State University.

Union members voted 94.4 percent in favor of a strike authorization, with voting taking place online and at CSU campuses between Oct. 19-28. Eagan said CFA doesn’t know how many ballots were cast, but the vote was verified by a third party.

Union members cheered Wednesday and chanted, “I don’t want to strike, but I will, I will.”

Talks over their 2015-16 salary began in May. After reaching an impasse, the two sides entered mediation, which failed Oct. 8 to produce an agreement.

Now the union and administration are in a process known as fact-finding, wherein a three-person panel — made up of one representative from each side and one neutral person — reviews proposals and issues a public report. Fact-finding hearings are scheduled for Nov. 23 and Dec. 7.

Should the two sides not reach agreement, CSU may make its last, best and final offer to the faculty union. At that point, the union may strike.

“No one takes a strike vote lightly, least of all faculty who have invested so much in students,” Eagan said.

CFA officials said Wednesday a strike could take place early next year. What it would entail remains to be seen. Union officials said all options are on the table, from scheduled walkouts on specific campuses to systemwide demonstrations.

CFA has dubbed its effort the Fight for Five. The union, which also is demanding an additional 2.65 percent increase for eligible professors based on years of service, has issued a series of scathing papers this year against the nation’s largest public university system.

The series, titled Race to the Bottom: CSU’s 10-Year Failure to Fund Its Core Mission, maintains that CSU faculty salaries have stagnated for years, with the average full-time salary for a professor standing at $64,479. CFA says the average salary for all faculty, including lecturers, is about $44,000.

The vote did not surprise administration officials.

“Similar authorizations were requested and approved by CFA members in prior CSU/CFA negotiations, and the strike authorization vote has now become a routine part of CFA’s post-impasse negotiation strategy,” said Toni Molle, a spokeswoman for the Chancellor’s Office, in an email.

The Chancellor’s Office has produced a different set of numbers than CFA. According to the administration, as of April the average salary for a full professor in the 460,000-student system is $96,064. The average salary for all tenure-track faculty is $86,314. Full-time lecturers earn an average salary of $59,333.

The gap between what CFA wants and what the university has offered amounts to $68.9 million. A 2 percent salary increase would cost $32.8 million, but a 5 percent increase would cost $101.7 million, according to the Chancellor’s Office.

Administrators say if CSU gave the faculty union what it wanted, the university would also have to bump up pay for other bargaining units because of a “me-too” clause in contracts. If that were to happen, the cost gap between the two sides would grow by another $39.1 million, to $108 million, according to the Chancellor’s Office.

CSU says its offer to the faculty union is the same given to other bargaining units in the university, and that the 2 percent raises for all employee groups amounts to $65.5 million.

The university says each new faculty hire costs $108,000 in salary and benefits, and 59 percent of the operating budget goes to compensation and benefits. According to system officials, health care and retirement costs ballooned by $77.3 million in 2015-16.

Last year, the two sides reached an agreement that set a general salary increase of 1.6 percent for all faculty in 2014-15, with about 9,300 faculty getting additional raises that boosted their pay by a total of 4.6 percent, according to the Chancellor’s Office.

The salary boost, along with a $960 increase in 2013 for full-time instructors, were the first raises for faculty since 2007.

“Compensation remains a top priority,” Molle said. “That’s why faculty were the only group of employees to receive salary increases and tenure-track salary promotions during the recession years,” she said.

Faculty members plan to demonstrate Nov. 17 at a Board of Trustees meeting in Long Beach.

Contact Josh Dulaney at 562-714-2150.