Teamsters Rally at Trustees Meeting, Demand CSU Pay Unit 6 Raises, Reject Executive Raises!
Teamsters Unit 6 Skilled Trades members rallied with students, faculty and other staff outside of the Nov. 18 California State University (CSU) Board of Trustee’s meeting to protest plans to consider significant pay increases for campus presidents while failing to honor their contractual raises to Skilled Trades Teamsters, as well as commitments to faculty and other frontline employees who are essential to student success.
Hundreds of members of the CSU Labor Coalition–made up of Teamsters Local 2010, Academic Professionals of California Local 4373 (APC), The California Faculty Association (CFA), California State University Employees Union (CSUEU), Students for a Quality Education (SQE), and United Auto Workers Local 4123–picketed around the Office of the Chancellor’s building and many spoke during public comment before the Trustees meeting.
Despite the strong opposition, the Trustees approved the pay hikes for campus presidents and other high-level executives, as well as a proposal to eliminate the policy that prevents incoming presidents from receiving more than a 10% salary increase over their predecessors. This outrageous move follows years of aggressive salary growth for top management—even as the university continues to claim budget shortfalls to justify program cuts, layoffs, increased workloads, and student fee hikes.
“Teamsters are fed up with CSU’s greed, dishonesty and disrespect for the workers who keep the University running every day. While we work hard serving the students and community, CSU refuses to pay our promised and well-deserved raises, at the same time pocketing the money provided by the state to fund those raises. Even worse, they’re now planning to give huge increases to already overpaid executives. CSU’s outrageous actions show management’s total disregard for the well-being of CSU workers and our families. Teamsters will not stand for CSU’s attempts to rip off workers, and we will continue to fight with everything we have until we win fairness for our members and all CSU workers!”
Jason Rabinowitz
Secretary-Treasurer, Teamsters Local 2010
CSU executives were already earning pay packages worth an average of half a million dollars a year, not including housing and car allowances. Meanwhile, Skilled Trades Teamsters’ wages were compressed by nearly 30 years without reliable salary steps to move long-time workers up their pay scale. After fighting for years to reinstate salary steps, Teamsters Unit 6 workers at CSU won them back after a series of successful strikes at the end of 2023. After paying one year of raises and implementing the first wave of salary step placements in 2024, the CSU refused to pay the July 2025 raises and salary step placements called for in our contract, claiming the state did not give them full funding.
Teamsters Local 2010 has filed grievances and Unfair Labor Practice charges and are currently at impasse in negotiations over the CSU’s failure to pay the raises.
Chancellor Mildred García received $1,062,000 in salary and other perks (deferred compensation and outside income—including her paid role as vice chair of the Educational Testing Service Board of Trustees.). Newly hired CSU vice presidents averaged $314,000 in annual salaries last fiscal year.
Despite this, Chancellor García continues to publicly claim the system does not have the funds to restore eliminated programs, reverse layoffs, or meaningfully increase faculty and staff compensation. Her recent announcement that she plans to use the state’s 0% interest loan to provide CSU employees with one-time bonuses falls far short of what faculty and staff need to keep up with inflation, build long-term financial stability, or protect retirement security.
Union Coalition members are calling on the CSU to:
- Commit to using the state’s 0% interest loan to pay promised contractual raises—not to prop up executive compensation schemes and offer faculty and staff a meager one-time bonus.
- Reject any executive salary increases amid ongoing cuts to instruction, staffing, and student support.
- Preserve policies that limit runaway presidential salary growth.
- Engage in good faith bargaining which results in real base salary increases for faculty and staff.
- Keep their previous promises to workers by directing campuses to immediately pay 2025 contractual raises and step increases that the CSU failed to pay due to their false narrative of decreased State funding.
View more photos and video from the Nov. 18 rally by clicking the button below.
