Collective bargaining has broken down between the California State University system and a union representing about 29,000 of its faculty and other staff — raising the specter of a strike just as the academic year begins. The higher education labor movement has boomed over the last couple of years, with prominent strikes in 2023 involving graduate workers at Temple University and the University of Michigan. But such a movement at Cal State, the largest public higher ed system in the U.S., would likely rock the landscape and ignite debate about whether college administrators are acting as good-faith negotiators.
