Members of California State University's faculty union are trying to vote online on whether to accept an unpaid furlough of two days per month. But first they have to solve a spam-filter problem.
The proposed furlough is part of efforts to close a huge budget deficit in the Cal State system that results from California's statewide financial woes. On Tuesday the system's Board of Trustees approved a 20-percent tuition increase.
The faculty voting began 10 days ago, when a third-party firm contracted by the union, the California Faculty Association, began e-mailing online ballots to the union's members. The vote was scheduled to end a week later, in time to announce the results in advance of Tuesday's meeting of the board.
But the end of voting was extended until Wednesday after servers on several of the campuses rejected the online ballots, assuming the mass e-mails were spam. Union representatives resorted to sending out individual ballots to eligible members who had not voted.
By today, a few members who wanted to vote were still having trouble extracting the online ballots from their spam folders, a spokeswoman for the union said, and the voting was delayed again. The results are now scheduled to be announced on Friday, she said.
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