Faculty approve furlough idea; Perfect Storm brewing

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - Members of the California Faculty Association approved the notion of furloughs (and a concomitant 9.75 percent pay reduction) in voting last week.

They also voted that they have about as much confidence in CSU Chancellor Charles Reed as England did in the late Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister whose policy of appeasement with Adolph Hitler managed to make World War II more complicated. (Somewhat of an understatement, but keep reading, please...)

But stop trying to see if Neville Chamberlain is an anagram for Charles Reed. It isn't, even if the appeasement parallels are very interesting.


Neville Chamberlain

Charles Reed

The details of how the 2 days per month faculty furloughs will work have to be negotiated between the California Faculty Association and Reed. But if earlier negotiations this summer are any indication, he won't negotiate anything.

What he has is cash to get through the fall semester, and now enough time to begin the process of faculty layoffs. I suspect he would have liked to have started the layoffs at the beginning of the summer, but figured it wouldn't fly politically.

Word of advice to young, untenured faculty: Tune up your resume quick - and consider what else you might do besides teach in the CSU.

Faculty reactions should be very interesting. Because a traditional furlough won't work (the result of having teaching schedules that are all over the place, timewise.), it could be that faculty will just figure out how to do 9.75 percent less work.

One formula might be easy: Faculty teaching four classes - and who also have three office hours per week - could reduce their class time (12 hours per week) and office hours (3 hours per week) and their prep time (as much as one hour of prep per class hour) by 9.75 percent.

In a 15-week semester, that would mean cutting out about 40 hours of work (class time, office hours and prep time) during the semester. (Trust me on the math, please.)

Will faculty consider something like this? Some will, some won't.

Regardless, with students paying 30 percent more in tuition this semester and faculty getting paid nearly 10 percent less, we have a near perfect storm in the California State University brewing and ready to hit.


California furlough sign

The Sacramento Bee's bad news just keeps on coming

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - These are sad times for journalists and journalism in general, even more so for The Sacramento Bee.

After so many years of being a company that took care of its employees like they were family, it has had to resort to cannibalism to patch a ship that is sinking so fast, most industry observers believe the McClatchy Company will go bankrupt by the end of the year.

Those people are the optimists.

In one of Dan Weintraub's 'conversations' the whole issue of the future of newspapers is being kicked around, most often with the focus on content. The contributors routinely gripe that The Bee's news coverage is biased (liberal or conservative). They have a point. News stories have become so laden with writers' opinions and biases, it's impossible to ignore.

But forget content.

Newspapers - like The Bee - are in a death spiral because their advertising revenues have been seriously depleted, thanks to the same economy that is savaging housing and everyone else.
If there were still advertising revenues, The Bee would not be getting ready for another astounding round of layoffs, furloughs - and even pay reductions.

After so many years of having a virtual monopoly - and rolling in advertising cash - the whole concept of pulling back has been foreign to The Bee management.

But The Bee needs to be more open about what's happening inside 21st and Q Streets. Certainly if it were any other major organization in Sacramento (public or private) reporters would be swarming over the debris to tell the stories.

For a look at what The Bee management has offered its employees, this url tells the story:

Bee union news