CSUEU President Pat Gantt sent this out last night. Links have been modified for readability in this format:
Dear CSUEU Board members,
It has been a several days since the Trustee’s meeting and I have collected some of my notes to share with you along with some other information.
Trustees Meeting
It was an interesting meeting to say the least. Our speakers on Tuesday addressed the Collective Bargaining committee on the issues of our contract and the need for all us to have competitive salaries. I presented to Chancellor Reed a letter that had two years of In Range Progression (IRP) Data attached and showed that only 6% of CSUEU represented employees received IRPs. The CSU must do better than that. The letter and the data from two years are attached to this email. Have you applied for an In Range Progression? Been thinking about it? Do it and help another 20 people.
In my final comments that day I also mentioned that the Executive salaries increases were ill timed and frankly stinks at a time where the CSU proposed to reduce our GSI by 1%. Other speakers, Sharon Cunningham, Lynn Barba, Rich McGee and Mary Granger each made some compelling statements from members or first hand experience. Some of the highlight of their comments:
A 15 year Sac State full time employee’s children qualify for free lunches at school.
An employee at CSUSB attended an evening convocation merely to eat dinner because they had not enough money left for groceries that week due to other expenses. If you would like more detail, our trusty Unit 9 reporter, Rich McGee has a blow by blow account:
Free School Lunches and Empty Refrigerators: CSU Staff Struggle Under Pay Gap (Unit 9 News)
While we spoke there were CSUEU members from the Chancellor’s Office, Long Beach and Dominguez Hills chapters that demonstrated outsides against the executive raises and what they are proposing with our compensation. A special thanks to CSUEU chapter presidents Susan Kirby, Richard Duarte and Mary Granger for mobilizing their members. It was also reported that somehow the spreadsheet showing the executive increases found its way into the bathroom stalls in the Chancellor’s Office as reading material. Chancellor’s Office Human Resources appears to have raised a concern regarding the distribution. I guess there was just no room on the bulletin boards that day. Good job!
Budget
In the area of the budget the Trustees and the Chancellor thanked labor for help with protecting the CSU budget. The increases in the executive salaries and the status of CSUEU bargaining may be better measures of their thanks.
Legislation
There are two bills that are sitting on the Governor’s desk that the Chancellor’s Office made some remarks about with some concern. Both bills are aimed at the CSU system and were supported by CSUEU. The bills are:
SB 190 deals with Executive compensation and may explain why the Chancellor was in such a hurry this year on the Presidential salary increases. It passed out of the Senate and Assembly with bi-partisan support.
AB 1413 deals with the structure of the trustees and the ex-officio trustees and passed along party lines in both the assembly and the senate. We will be sending out more information on what to do on these bills in another email. Senator Yee’s staff has contacted us on a possible press conference in the next week or ten days.
Executive pay
Passed the raises, but not without some discussion and dissention by Lieutenant Governor Garamendi. Trustees Garamendi and Ricardo Icaza, president of a southern California retail clerks union voted no to the raises. This was the first time in a long time that any trustees voted against any action. There presence and vote is a direct result of the email campaign we launched on the issue. Please double check the CSUEU website for other articles on the executive salary issue.
The CSU, Northridge student paper has a pretty good story on the plenary comments even though they listed me as a professor of Biology. ( Hey, I better check my paycheck again)
CSU Trustees approve executive pay raises (Daily Sundial at CSU Northridge)
It was a busy week and we got more media attention than we have in a long time. Together we made an impact at the campus and system level. Stay tuned.
In Union,
Pat Gantt
Documents sent with this email were:In-Range Progression Report Card (Letter from Pat Gantt to Reed)
In-Range Progression 2005-2006 distribution (Excel spreadsheet)
In-Range Progression 2006-2007 distribution (Excel spreadsheet)
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