The President of the local faculty union chapter fired back at President Donald Gerth?s comment that the voice of the faculty on campus is not the union, in a letter to the Hornet.

In a demonstration April 18, Sacramento State union members sent a memo to Gerth, asking him to voice their concerns over salary and workload to CSU Chancellor Charles Reed.

Shortly after the demonstration, Gerth said that he would not take the memo to the Chancellor and drew a distinction to the union and the local Faculty Senate.

The senate was the “voice” of the faculty, he said.

“It is not surprising, of course, for top authorities to try to tell others who may and may not speak for them. But faculty make their own choices. They voted in 1982 for CFA [California Faculty Association] to be their sole collective bargaining agent and, as President Gerth knows because he is a political scientist, under state law, CFA was then charged with representing all faculty in a number of ways, whether they are members or not,” local union President Jeff Lustig wrote.

“The fact of the matter is that the faculty is one body, not two. It speaks through senate on certain matters and through the union on others.”

Faculty members with salary and work-related grievances should go to the union, Lustig wrote. The senate handles curriculum and academic policy, he said.

“But I am glad he is scrupulous, at least, about respecting the senate,” Lustig said. “That means he must have told Chancellor Reed about its 1999 referendum in which 93 percent of the CSUS faculty polled voted ?no confidence? in Reed and his policies.”

Negotiations on the next faculty salary contract??which will set the salary and working conditions for California State University faculty??have been underway since April 12. The union threatened a strike in the Fall 2001 semester if an agreement cannot be reached.