The agreement marks the beginning of the end for a negotiation process that stretched nearly two years. The rhetoric between the two sides had heated up in recent weeks, with faculty announcing last week that they would begin two-day walkouts at six universities, including Sacramento State.

The deal would raise the average salary of a tenure-track faculty member from $74,000 to $90,749 over four years, CSU officials said. The average salary for a full-time, full professor with tenure will go from $86,000 to $105,465.

All told, faculty will receive base pay increases of almost 21 percent over four years. Eligible faculty can also get additional, smaller raises based on experience and merit. They've received one raise in the past four years.

Neither side fell over themselves trying to praise the other Tuesday, but both expressed relief that an agreement was reached.

"I'm pleased for the faculty and the students," CSU Chancellor Charles Reed told The Bee. "I think (the agreement) is fair."

The agreement, said California Faculty Association President John Travis, "will be good for CSU, good for our students, good for the faculty and frankly it will be good for California."

The final wording of the agreement will be worked out in the next couple of weeks. Faculty union members likely will ratify the deal later this month and CSU's Board of Trustees will do the same soon afterward, faculty and administrators said. The agreement would cover the system's 23,000 faculty -- including non-tenured lecturers -- who instruct more than 400,000 students on 23 campuses.

The total pay package will cost CSU more than $400 million over four years, administrators said.

Both sides argued a bit Tuesday over who got the most out of the settlement, which was patterned closely on an independent fact-finding report released last month.

The faculty association said it had gained an almost total victory.

"We didn't get everything we wanted," Travis said. "But we got close to everything we wanted."

Chancellor Reed, on the other hand, said both sides gave up some of their demands to reach a settlement. "The fact-finder ... split the difference," he said.

At Sacramento State, President Alexander Gonzalez said he's happy faculty members will stay on the job next week, adding that a substantial pay increase for faculty is a good idea.

"This is an investment in the faculty that needs to happen," he said.

Most faculty members are also pleased the strike has been called off, said Cecil Canton, head of the Sacramento chapter of the California Faculty Association. A few, though, were looking forward to taking a stand.

"Some would like to take the action," he said. "You can't imagine how empowering this has been for the faculty."

The agreement would likely not have been favorable to the faculty if a strike had not been threatened, Canton said.

The faculty at Sacramento State is still considering whether to call a vote of no confidence in Gonzalez over his handling of university finances -- an issue that was not resolved by Tuesday's agreement.

Jude Antonyappan, an associate professor of social work at Sacramento State who opposed the walkout, said she hopes faculty members don't come away from the last two years thinking that authorizing a strike is the answer to problems.

"We have to be very cautious in how we proceed," she said.

The lengthy negotiations and strike authorization vote have left raw feelings on both sides, straining relations between faculty and management.

"We don't trust them," Travis, the CFA president, said Tuesday when talking about the ratification of the contract.

And, when asked Tuesday about working with the union in the future, Chancellor Reed said: "I hope it's going to be a lot easier."

By Phillip Reese, Sacramento Bee, April 4, 2007