SF State's faculty will receive their first raise in three years as campus negotiators reached an agreement on a salary increase of 3.5 percent.

Faculty will begin seeing the increase on their Nov. 1 paychecks. The increase is retroactive to July 1, and money owed from this time period will be issued as a lump-sum payment that will be processed in mid-October, according to the California Faculty Association’s Web site.

Both the CFA and California State University representatives hailed the agreement as a triumph, but also recognized that significant issues still must be discussed before a final contract can be agreed upon.

“We are negotiating different aspects,” said Clara Potes-Fellow, media relations manager for the CSU system. "It's all give and take."

The Academic Senate, after praising the agreement at its last meeting, called on both parties to resolve the remaining matters in a "faculty-friendly" manner.

In a press release, CFA officials called the agreement “a positive sign that the trustees and the CSU administration can be persuaded to do the right thing.

“The trustees and the administration were motivated, we hope, by the personal sacrifices that faculty have made over the last two and a half years. During this time we have worked harder than ever while receiving no pay raises at all.”

In early September, negotiations came to a halt after CSU officials added new provisions to an already agreed-upon general salary increase proposal. The controversial provisions are not on the current salary proposal.

Among the many difficult issues facing the ongoing contract negotiations is whether or not CSU will get rid of the Faculty Early Retirement Plan (FERP). Getting rid of the FERP will likely cause a flood of early retirements before the program ends, according to Linda Ellis, director of the SF State Museum Studies program and a faculty representative at SF State.

By getting rid of longtime instructors who get paid more, Ellis said, the CSU could replace them with younger teachers who are paid less. The issue of merit pay is also a very contentious issue.

“This is a way of killing the civil service system,” Ellis said. “Merit pay means that not everyone gets a raise; it’s a very antagonistic system.”

SF State faculty have been working since 2004 under an extension of their old contract. Negotiators on both sides agreed to extend the contract one year in hopes of an improved economy providing enough funding for the two sides to edge closer in negotiations.