Education: California Says Yes to Unions

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A state faculty, 20,000 strong, decides to organize

The campaign went on for months, complete with professional organizers, phone banks, rallies, mountains of leaflets and handouts, plus a blizzard of ballots. Recalls San Jose State Basketball Coach Bill Berry: "For weeks, when you saw people all they said was, 'Did you vote? Did you vote?' "

At stake was the question of whether some 20,000 faculty members of California's huge, 19-campus state university system would accept union representation, and if so, which union. The principal alternatives were the more traditional Congress of Faculty Associations (C.F.A.) and the more militant United Professors of California (U.P.C.). When the faculty ballots were counted last week, the unions were virtually tied and headed for a runoff. But in a resounding 80% return, the Cal State faculty voted to become the largest faculty ever to unionize in the U.S.

Cal State was fertile ground for organizing. Unlike the prestigious University of California system, an academic powerhouse of nine branches, including Berkeley and U.C.L.A., Cal State evolved as a collection of teacher colleges in such cities as San Jose, Chico and Fresno. Partly because it emphasizes teaching instead of research, Cal State has been treated as a second-class organization. Money and a slight inferiority complex have not been its only problems. At a time when job security is poor and tenure is an impossible dream to many young academics all over the country, 38% of the

Cal State faculty are hired on a part-time or year-to-year basis. Cal State has also been shaken by the same troubles as public institutions elsewhere. The state legislature provides starvation rations while the Federal Government has cut back aid.

Nearly as serious as economic deprivation is the disaffection that afflicts many faculties. Cal State campuses are governed by off-campus bureaucrats who seem to care little for faculty opinions. When Cal State sought a successor for Chancellor Glenn Dumke and formed a search committee, not a single faculty member was named to it. Sacramento State University History Professor Kenneth Owens, 48, even blames far-off administrators for the deterioration in classroom conditions. Says he: "The system has been so altered from anything resembling a collegial atmosphere that trade unions are the best way left to gain some influence over university affairs."