Our view: Strike plans insult the working Californians who pay professors' salaries

The next time you feel like venting about your lousy job, just remember, it could be worse. You could be a professor in the California State University system.

Think of it, a guaranteed job for life (once you've reached tenure), sabbaticals and conferences in exotic locales. And how about that schedule? There's Thanksgiving break, winter break, spring break, summer break, plus all of the state and federal holidays (about 14 in all). Our guess is that they don't linger on Friday afternoons either, if you know what we mean.

Then there's the salary: $55,000 for a full-time assistant professor. A tenured full-time professor earns well in excess of $80,000. That's on top of benefits, including health, dental and retirement, that add up to another $20,000 in annual compensation.

In exchange for this indentured servitude, you have to go to faculty meetings, submit articles to obscure journals, write papers that few will ever read, provide intellectual fodder to those seeking to overthrow the very system that you benefit from, and teach an occasional class to the ungrateful blank slates who weren't smart enough to make the grade for the University of California system.

Of course, most of this is in jest, but, as with all satire, there's a kernel of truth. Although the life of a man or woman of letters is probably not as easy as it seems, it ain't breaking rocks in the noonday sun neither.

This tongue-in-cheek reaction is prompted by Wednesday's announcement that professors, librarians, coaches and counselors at the state's 23 CSU campuses had voted to initiate the first labor strike at the country's largest university system. The strike is to include a series of two-day "rolling walkouts" that will begin next month, including at the San Marcos campus.

California State University officials concede that, compared with professors in other universities, CSU professors are underpaid. In an attempt to close the gap, they've offered faculty a 25 percent raise over four years. That's in addition to a raise of 3.5 percent they received only two years ago. It's a fair assumption that most Californians would view that as a generous offer.

Teachers are balking, saying that only about 15 percent of that 25 percent raise is real. The remaining percentage is based on state funds that union reps say isn't there or on things such as merit pay, which makes up about 3 percent of the total. You're familiar with merit pay, aren't you? It's what the rest of us refer to as a paycheck.

More appealing are the teachers union's concerns that the CSU administrators aren't setting the best example: On the same day that the strike was announced, the state Senate held a hearing on excessive compensation for CSU executives. They deserve a similar degree of chiding.

The CSU system holds an important place in our state and students deserve the best faculty that money can buy, but perhaps it's time for academics to learn that life is full of compromise. Cal State's professors should take the 25 percent -- give or take -- drop the walkouts and the picket lines, and get back to class.