Executive perks at Cal State protested
About 1,000 faculty and students rallied Wednesday in Long Beach outside a meeting of the California State University trustees to protest what they said are lavish benefits for administrators and stalled contract talks between professors and the 23-campus system.
At one point, demonstrators disrupted the meeting with chants, such as “End of perks,” and a group of 22 professors linked arms and sat down in front of the trustees’ desks.
Amid the noise, the board dropped normal procedures and with a quick voice vote approved items discussed in committees.
That included changes to a controversial policy that gave top administrators a year’s pay after they left their jobs but before their actual retirements.
Under the reforms, executives hired after Wednesday can receive that so-called transition year only if they then return to another Cal State post, such as professor. They would be banned from working for another employer during that year and their pay and duties would have to be disclosed.
John Travis, president of the 23,000-member California Faculty Assn., likened those changes to putting “lipstick on a pig.”
He and other union leaders said 22 current administrators can still receive the year’s pay without the new restrictions.
Travis, a political science professor at Humboldt State, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking to stop transition salaries and get repayments for past ones. The suit alleges that public funds are illegally given to people who are not required to provide any service.
The suit cites Peter Smith, who received nearly $158,000 for the year after he left the presidency of Cal State Monterey Bay, even though he worked for a United Nations group.
University spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow said the trustees’ action was partly in response to criticism of such arrangements.
But she said the transition years are a valuable recruitment tool and that most people in one perform duties for the university system, such as developing new degrees.
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