By Melissa Martinez

News Editor

In March, the CSU Board of Trustees met to discuss proposed plans on how the $125.1 million extra in state funding for the CSU would be distributed. After much anticipation, the Committee on Finance proposed a plan for Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget proposal which may provide faculty and staff a pay raise, after multiple strike voting and six years of anticipation.

The Committee of Finance budgeted $38 million of the allocated $125.1 million towards faculty and staff compensation, providing a 1.2 percent raise for all CSU faculty and employees.

The remainder of the Prop. 30 tax increase of $125.1 million would be divided within cost increases of the CSU—$48.2 million for employee health care benefits and $7.2 million allocated for student success in increasing graduation rates as well as reducing the achievement gap, according to The Sacramento Bee.

In the fall of 2011, the CSU faculty held massive one-day strikes at CSU East Bay and Dominguez Hills in regard to labor disagreements that shut down the entire campuses for both CSUs. In the spring of 2012, the Board of Directors of the California Faculty associated voted unanimously to vote on whether they wanted to move forward with a strike and in April 2012, discussion of new contracts began. Strike votes were held on all 23 CSU campuses from April 16 – 27 of 2012.

However, according to CSU Spokesman Mike Uhlenkamp, staff and faculty of the CSU have not received a raise since 2007 and 2008. Gov. Brown’s proposed budget plan would allocate funds to be specifically distributed to CSU employee compensation.

According to the Daily 49er of CSULB, “In addition to salary raises, CSU officials said they would spend the remaining amount of Brown’s proposed budget increase on enrollment growth, student access and success initiatives, mandatory costs and redesigning ‘bottleneck’ courses, according to the agenda.”

With the increase from Brown’s budget proposal, allocated $21.7 million would also potentially allow 5,700 students enroll in the CSU, according to Daily 49er.