Contract negotiations between California State University leaders and its faculty union hit a brick wall Tuesday morning, pushing the 23 campuses closer to what would be the first ever systemwide faculty strike.

CSU officials announced in a statement Tuesday morning that they were ending the current round of negotiations by giving all university faculty, librarians, counselors and coaches a 5% salary bump, effective at the end of the month.

The raise is a far cry from the 12% increase the California Faculty Association requested for the current academic year.

The faculty union, which represents 29,000 CSU professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches, staged a rotating round of faculty walkouts on four campuses in December and plans to strike for a week starting Jan. 22 if no agreement is reached.

A strike would include about 370 workers at CSU Channel Islands.

Greg Wood, president of CSUCI’s union chapter, said the breakdown in negotiations makes the work stoppage “all but inevitable.” Faculty are “very concerned” that students will miss a week of classroom instruction, he said, but have high hopes the strike will force the CSU system’s hand.

“We have not done this before in the history of the CSU, and we don’t take this lightly,” Wood said.

CFA President Charles Toombs lashed back against the state university system in a statement Tuesday afternoon, saying its bargaining team had cut negotiations short.

“Rather than bargain in good faith with CFA members, CSU management expressed nothing but disdain for faculty,” Toombs wrote.

CSU’s decision to end talks exhausts the state’s impasse process for the current round of talks though the closure of this bargaining round opens the door for the sides to begin negotiating the union’s next contract, which begins in June, according to the state university system.

The two sides have consistently disagreed on how much money CSU management has available to spend. CSU officials said the union’s salary demand wasn’t financially viable and would have meant layoffs and other “massive cuts.”

Toombs fired back that the CSU system has money in “flush” reserve accounts.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Cal State faculty strike nears after contract talks break down