Union leader blasts presidents' raises

By Douglas Sulenta
The Collegian

A leader of a university employee union recently deemed the pay raises handed out to CSU campus executives at the October Board of Trustees meeting “shameful.”

Nancy Kobata, Fresno Chapter president of the California State University Employees Union, said the trustees were unfair and out of line with what had been proposed at their previous meeting.

According to a CSUEU press release, the intention of the meeting was to “close the faculty and staff salary gap” that exists between CSU union employees and the CSU executives. What happened was to the contrary, the union said.

Kobata said the October meeting was to give the CSU staff and faculty their first raise in three years and put them closer to the salaries of the CSU executives. The faculty and staff did get their raise, 3 percent each of the next five years, but the executives received a raise dwarfing that of the staff.

The university presidents, as well as senior staff members at the Chancellor’s Office, are set to get a raise of 10 percent each year for the next five years. Kobata said this only widens the pay gap between the appointed executives and the staff.

On top of the 10 percent raise in salary for campus executives, the CSU Board of Trustees last October set the automobile allowance for presidents, the executive vice chancellor, the chief financial officer, the vice chancellor of human resources and the general counsel at a monthly rate of $1,000.

In addition, most university presidents in the CSU system will receive a yearly housing allowance of $50,000 to $60,000.

“At the September meeting a group was put together to address the pay gap,” Kobata said. “The solutions that group returned with were less than satisfactory to the CSUEU.

“Along with these disproportionate raises given to the university executives, they also chose to, yet again, to raise student tuition by 8 percent for undergraduates and 10 percent for graduate students.”

According to the Trustees of California State University meeting notes, yearly tuition for full-time undergraduate students will go up to $2,724 from $2,520 and graduate students’ tuition will now be $3,412, up from $3,102. This marks the fifth year in a row student tuition has been increased.

Fresno State students were not pleased about the raise in tuition.

“It doesn’t seem fair. I don’t want to pay more for tuition,” said Ana Reyes, a liberal studies major.

Criminology major Larry Villagomez echoed the sentiments of Reyes.

“Students won’t like any increase in tuition. It just doesn’t seem right for the administration to get a raise. It’s all politics.”

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