Cal State Faculty Open a Strike Vote With AI Guardrails on the Table

From today on, the union is putting one question to 29,000 of its members at the 23 California State University campuses, from San Jose State and San Francisco State to Cal State East Bay: should it have the right to call a strike? The professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches are being asked to weigh in, and the vote is open until November 19. On the ballot are the customary disputes over class sizes and pay as well as an item of a more recent vintage. Less than two years after the CSU system became the largest customer ChatGPT has ever had in higher education, the California Faculty Association would like its next contract to lay down the law on how the country's biggest public university system deploys artificial intelligence.

What the vote decides

A yes vote by more than half of those who cast a ballot gives the union's board the authority to order a strike in the event negotiations come to nothing; it does not in itself start one. In addition to the electronic ballots, chapters are hosting voting events on campus, and there are 22 rallies and marches planned across the state over the next two weeks. Union leaders are anticipating a one-sided outcome. The last time such a vote was held, in 2023, 95 percent of participating members said yes.

State labor law has dictated the timetable. The union declared an impasse in July after months of talks dating to last November, something the Public Employment Relations Board upheld despite the system's objection that it was premature. Mediation did not work. Now the parties are moving to fact-finding before a three-member panel at hearings set for November 2, 5, 6, 12 and 13. Kevin Wehr, the union's bargaining chair, will sit on the panel for the faculty, while Joseph Jelincic, the system's associate vice chancellor for labor relations, sits for management. It will not be until the panel puts out its report, probably in December, that the union can legally walk out.

Five issues, one of them new

Some of what the union is asking for will be no surprise to those who were around for the previous contract battle. The faculty are looking for raises that keep up with the cost of living, limits on how large classes get, more job security for lecturers on short appointments and firmer protections for academic freedom. They have dismissed the system's opening offer of a 3 percent raise with a 3 percent one-time payment as weak. By way of contrast, the system reached tentative deals earlier this month with three other unions, covering some 14,000 police officers, student services professionals and academic student workers, on 4 percent raises retroactive to July and another 4 percent next July, along with one-time bonuses.

Then there is the fifth demand, which should hold the interest of anyone in tech. The union wants written and enforceable rules on AI in the contract.

The matter dates to February 2025 and the Cal State system's announcement of a partnership with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, NVIDIA, IBM and others to create what it called an AI-empowered university system and put ChatGPT Edu in front of more than 460,000 students and 63,000 faculty and staff on all 23 campuses. The faculty union took issue with the fact that the faculty were not part of the conversation. On its page on AI, the union makes the case that the $17 million initiative was put in place without consulting the people who teach the classes, and it has run a petition asking the chancellor to let the OpenAI contract lapse and put the money to work on jobs instead.

Change is already evident on the teaching side. Cal State LA lecturers now staff the bachelor's degree program inside San Quentin, the kind of campus a Sparknify report this weekend noted has no AI tools in use at all. And according to the union, these are the very lecturers with the least job security when budgets or enrollment shift.

What the system has put on paper

Since spring the two parties have been going back and forth with drafts of an AI article, and the system's third counterproposal, put forward on July 9, is a measure of the distance that remains between them. Management's version is a memorandum of understanding that describes itself as a set of general, aspirational principles rather than the new enforceable rights the union has sought. It would expire with the contract.

A professor might find some of its provisions reassuring. The document affirms the faculty's right to determine their own course design and teaching methods, down to the question of whether to employ AI at all, and says AI cannot replace faculty-led instruction. There is also a pledge of a one-time $2.5 million fund for campus AI training. And it draws one bright line in plain language.

Then there are the parts that go the other way. The system retains its management rights to adopt, change or drop AI systems, and promises only to meet and confer on request about foreseeable impacts. Faculty, counselors included, would have to disclose when they turn to AI for notes, summaries or instructional support. And a sentence the union had proposed was simply struck from the text.

In that rejected sentence lies the crux of the issue. On its AI page the union frames surveillance by AI as a workplace and civil rights matter, and the faculty want a ban on AI in evaluations and monitoring written into a contract that an arbitrator can enforce. Management's draft allows AI tools to assist decisions so long as they do not independently determine employment actions, which leaves room for AI-generated inputs to human decisions.

Why the union is organizing around it

The union has dubbed its campaign "Fund the Classroom, Not the Boardroom," and this week's rallies carry the blunter theme "Cost of Living is a Nightmare." Its leadership says the system has expanded its technology and administrative spending while trimming the workforce and academic programs at the same time.

Margarita Berta-Avila, the union's president and a Sacramento State professor, set the tone for the vote at the union's fall assembly last weekend, telling delegates that the months ahead would be a matter of holding together.

For its part, the system has pointed to the deals already done. In a statement on Thursday, Chancellor Mildred Garcia called labor negotiations challenging but essential work and said she was pleased with the momentum toward agreements with all of the system's unions.

Will Cal State faculty strike again, and will AI end up in the contract?

What is most probable in the coming months is a repeat of 2024, if not in result then in form. The first systemwide faculty strike in Cal State history got under way that January and was over in short order with a deal that delivered 10 percent in raises over two years, put a higher floor under the pay of the lowest-paid faculty and extended paid parental leave. According to the union, management would not give its proposals any credence until members were prepared to withhold their labor, and the vote now under way is built on that lesson. With fact-finding running through December, any strike would land in the spring semester, when 460,000 students would feel it.

The money is harder this time around. Budget pressure has seen the system trim programs and positions, and it has already established a 4 and 4 pattern with three other unions. Moving the faculty well beyond that would mean reopening all the other deals. The union has its own figures: the system has found millions for AI licenses and administrators even as classes grow and lecturers lose sections, so what were once separate disputes are now one fight.

Silicon Valley will be watching the AI question most closely. It would mark the first time a faculty contract at a university system of this size spelled out in writing what a university may and may not do with the technology its vendors are selling it. The companies in the Cal State partnership want the campuses to serve as reference customers. Should a clause be written that bars AI from employee monitoring and faculty evaluations, or that requires bargaining before new systems are put in place, unions at other universities would be following suit within a year. Management's rejoinder is that an aspirational memorandum will do and that it must be free to take up tools as they come along, a stance most employers in the region would recognize. Critics of the union's approach contend that contract language cannot keep up with software that is revised every quarter and that faculty already control their own classrooms. Its supporters answer that the ChatGPT rollout itself is the proof that nothing stops the system from deciding first and consulting after the fact.

Signals to keep an eye on: the turnout and yes share when voting ends on November 19; whether the fact-finding panel's report in December recommends an AI article at all; whether the chancellor renews the OpenAI contract before it expires at the end of June or lets it run out; whether the other unions ratify their 4 and 4 deals, which would lock in the pattern; and whether the union sets a date for a spring strike.

Cal State's faculty are voting on their pay, but the clause with the widest reach will be the one that says what a machine may not do.

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