CSU trustees upset about union hits on chancellor
San Francisco Chronicle 3/15/07
It was the trustees most vocal response to increasing strife between Chancellor Charles Reed and the 23,000-member faculty union, whose members are angry because they haven't received a pay raise in four years. Differences over pay is the key issue and the union is taking a strike vote among its membership.
Roberta Achtenberg, who chairs the Board of Trustees, told her colleagues at their meeting in Long Beach on Wednesday that the efforts "to sully the reputation for integrity of the chancellor, the staff or the board (are) reprehensible and unbecoming of this institution."
Jeff Bleich, the board's vice chairman, criticized posters and fliers that have appeared above urinals in university restrooms and other locations around the 23-campus system, which refer to the chancellor as "Charles Greedy Reed."
"There is not anything greedy about Charles Reed," Bleich said. "He manages the largest and most complicated university system in the world, and he is entitled to the highest compensation among university chief executives. To call him greedy is to assassinate his character and be reckless. These types of activities degrade us all."
He said Reed -- who receives a salary of about $377,000 a year, plus a $30,000 retirement supplement from the CSU Foundation, as well as state housing -- is underpaid when compared to top administrators at other major universities.
Bleich also castigated faculty members and students for disrupting several of Reed's public and private speaking engagements, and asked the leadership of the California Faculty Association to repudiate these kinds of protests.
Trustee Debra Farar also spoke of her regret and sadness that Reed has come under fire.
"This board is not ignorant or uninformed about what is going on. All of the board supports the chancellor," Farar said. "He works tirelessly for this university. The chancellor is the best thing to happen to this university system."
Trustee Herbert Carter said the faculty union was engaging in "swift boat tactics" and "the politics of personal destruction."
"I am disgusted with some of the tactics," said Trustee Melinda Guzman, referring to an episode when dead flowers were left outside the State University House in Long Beach, where the chancellor lives. "It doesn't need to get personal."
Alice Sunshine, a spokeswoman for the faculty union, attributed the protests to Reed's misplaced priorities. "The feeling is that he goes around the country telling how great things are in the CSU, and there's another story to be told," she said. "There's been a lot of satire and some anger on the part of the faculty that has been expressed. I think part of it is frustration that they haven't been heard or listened to by the trustees. But the dead flowers we don't know anything about. That's not us."
Reed did not address the recent protests in his remarks to the trustees, except to note: "I want to thank you, board, for your trust and your confidence."