Reporting by Anna Royal

On Jan. 22, 2024, lecturers, professors, coaches, and other employees across all 23 California State University (CSU) campuses will go on strike demanding higher pay and improved student and workers’ rights. Solina Lindahl, a Cal Poly Economics lecturer for 29 years and San Luis Obispo (SLO) local is highly involved in organizing the strike for the Cal Poly SLO campus. She sits on Cal Poly’s CFA board with many of her colleagues. Lindahl sat down with The Wire and provided an inside view on what Cal Poly and other CSU workers are striking against and hoping to achieve through their protests.

Q: How did you get into teaching?

Lindahl: “I was a single mother and a lecture position opened up right at the right time. I do love economics, but it ended up being a really good fit for my family situation, the flexibility of when you can do your work as an instructor. I started there, and I kept loving it and staying.”

Q: What is your involvement in the upcoming strike on campus?

Lindahl: “As part of the California Faculty Association (CFA) executive board, we are trying to pull together this thing we haven’t done before, which is mobilizing Cal Poly and all 23 CSU campuses. [We] are getting a quick education in community organizing for a very large, complex thing. We’re putting messages out to students trying to cut through some of the confusion, we’re putting messages out to faculty to cut through their confusion. We are basically doing the work of protecting faculty salaries, protecting student access to mental health, protecting lactation spaces, gender inclusive restrooms – it's about money, but it's also about caring for people. [San Luis Obispo is] a hard place to be able to afford to stay. Especially for Cal Poly, these things I think really matter. It’s advocacy for people that are scared to strike, advocacy for people who might otherwise not stand up for themselves.”


Q: What are you and the other professors on campus hoping to achieve through this strike?

Lindahl: “Extending family leave from six weeks to a semester — we don’t get much family leave — lactation spaces, reducing the student to counselor ratio so students have more access to mental health... One of the biggest things we are fighting for is the cost of living increase … The lowest paid lecturers earn less than pre-school teachers. We are trying to get the lowest paid up to a certain floor of wage.”

Q: What will the layout of the strike look like?

Lindahl: “We are trying to be visible, we are not trying to cause disruptions. So people can still get through, we won’t be stopping traffic. We will be at all the main entrances, both California entrances and the Grand entrance.”

Q: Could the strike last shorter or longer than a week?

Lindahl: “Yes, management could call it off at any point. They walked out of negotiations after 20 minutes, and they could come back if they wanted to.”

Q: What is the reporting process that the CSU system has which allows students to report teachers who cancel class during the strike? 

Lindahl: “There’s two different types of reporting, and this is one of the most confusing and I think intimidating tactics that management has used. They have sent multiple emails to us asking us to self-report our absences and telling us we will be docked our pay for however long we are striking; which is legal and understandable, [but] the repeated messaging is a little bit weird. [There was] an email that went out to students but [that] faculty were not copied on that gave students a website to report strikers. I believe the CFA is filing investigations into that and complaints because we think it's a violation.”

Q: How can students support their professors through this strike?

Lindahl: “The most important thing is to show solidarity and be out there – every student is going to decide whether they cross the picket line or not, but even when they’re not in class they can be out there in the picket lines with us. We have some fun things planned for the week and would love to see students out there … We feed you, we’ve got rallies, we’ve got music, there's a drag show happening later in the week.”


Editor’s Note: The CFA strike ended on January 22nd, 2024, after a tentative deal was struck between the parties.