Due to changes still being made to YRO plans and questions still being raised by faculty members and chairs, CSUS-CFA has decided to postpone the vote on the YRO agreement tentatively scheduled for this Tuesday and Wednesday (Dec. 12-13). After consulting with our Executive Committee, many members and half the department chairs, we are persuaded that postponement is in the best interests of faculty and students.

While many aspects of the YRO plan are not within the scope of CFA negotiations, we have worked closely with Faculty & Staff Affairs to come to agreement on those provisions that do affect faculty rights, salaries and workload, and have done so because we believe that YRO has the potential for many benefits for both faculty and students. The new provisions we develop will be admendments to the CBA (Collective Bargining Agreement), and need to be ratified by a vote of CFA members, as explained in our leaflet of two weeks ago.

The timetable for YRO planning was telescoped dramatically when the Governor unexpectedly moved the date for full implementation from summer, 2005, to summer 2002, and instructed Chancellor Reed accordingly. Though many of our members were astonished that the Chancellor would expect us to help in an expedited planning process for a new program while still refusing to pay us properly for our current professional work and to resolve outstanding FMI issues, we decided on balance to join in the accelerated planning process. We have worked closely with Faculty & Staff Affairs this fall and devoted a good deal of time in planning meetings to get YRO off the ground.

We have developed the outlines of a workable agreement (making sure, for example, that assignments will be voluntary, faculty will receive normal pay for teaching and extra pay for extra duties, and lecturers will earn entitlements.) These provisions occur, however, within larger parameters set by others. And those, unfortunately, have continued to change. Getting a settled proposal has turned into something like trying to hit a moving target.

Specifically, (1) legislative funding for YRO turns out to be less than anticipated (for all but the four lead campuses: Long Beach, San Diego, San Francisco and Fullerton). How this will affect YRO at CSUS needs to be explained, as there are insufficient General Fund monies to pay all full professors who want to teach, and to provide full student support services as initially promised. (2) A CSUS "Analysis of Costs and Funding for Summer 2001 YRO" (dated 11/21/00), announces Breakeven Class Sizes that will also affect YRO teaching assignments. I.e., the levels of minimal enrollment for different classes will affect the amounts departments can spend on faculty, in many cases requiring either that tenured professors not teach YRO or that they do so at reduced salaries. This holds a potential for divisiveness between and within departments that was not expected. It also places indirect restrictions on the provision that all summer assignments be voluntary.

Given so many unanswered questions and the extraordinary importance of an agreement that will launch a whole new form of academic programming, holding a YRO agreement election this week would be premature. We need to get things right to start with.

We are in no way faulting CSUS Faculty & Staff Affairs or other administrators in this. We have worked together cooperatively and, I think, constructively. And we appreciate the meeting the administration has scheduled with department chairs this week to answer some of the above question. But even if all the chairs' questions were answered satisfactorily Tuesday, one day's time for faculty to study this complicated agreement and amended explanations and make a decision of this magnitude would be insufficient.

This postponement need not tie-up YRO planning. We have come to the rough outlines of an agreement as noted above, and many aspects of the planning process, again, do not lie in the purview of an amended CBA.

In sum: given the significance of this agreement we have decided that little is lost and much will be gained by taking the extra time to work out its details and make sure faculty have time to make an informed decision. The current draft agreement is posted on the CFA chapter (and also state) web, http://www.csus.edu/org/cfa/ We encourage you to review it and ask any questions you have about it. We will provide clarifications about outstanding issues before putting this agreement to a vote by CFA members at the beginning of Spring Semester, 2001. (And if you are not yet a member of CFA, be sure to join so you can participate in this important decision.)

--Jeff Lustig, for the CSUS-CFA Executive Committee