In a remarkable reversal of traditional unionist advocacy, the members of the faculty association at Cal State San Bernardino are calling upon the California State University System to withhold retirement benefits from outgoing President Tomás Morales based on what its members are calling performance criteria.
Traditionally, unions have held that promises of benefits made to employees by an employer – within either the private or public sector – are sacrosanct and an employee’s work product quality or lack thereof should not have any impact on whether the employer is to make good on benefit guarantees.
Unions have consistently taken the position that the withdrawal of agreed-upon benefits or loyalty rewards would created a dangerous precedent whereby employers in the future would be, or feel themselves to be, at liberty to welsh on the assurances they gave to employees singly or collectively during the contract bargaining process or in individual contracts. Such precedents would, it was generally considered, strengthen the hand of corporate or government management and weaken laborers.
In the case of Morales, however, sentiment against him on a widespread personal basis among Cal State employees and others is so strong and runs so deep, that union members and even union officials appear ready to throw caution to the wind and focus on evening scores with him.
For the unionist and Democratic-leaning faculty at San Bernardino State University, such enmity toward Morales, who has held the university presidency since 2012 and was the first Latino to accede to that post overseeing an institution of higher learning that boasts one of the highest percentage of Hispanic students in the country, is noting short of remarkable.
While the university and the university system are public institutions, the Cal State University Board of Trustees which oversees the governance the 23 California State University campuses, just like the University of California Board of Regents, which oversees the ten campuses of the University of California, has adopted an incentive program for the top educational administrators it employs, somewhat akin to but not quite as generous as what is provided to senior management in the private sector. Corporations routinely provide their chief executive officers, chief operating officers, chief financial officers, presidents and vice presidents with bonuses – and occasionally very substantial seven or eight figure bonuses – when those corporations reach economic performance goals or register earnings beyond what was projected for them.
While Morales has no shortage of detractors, he also has a list of accomplishments and a wellspring of supporters.
During Morales’ presidency, the university experienced financial and student growth, physical expansion, enhanced student support, and an intense focus on community engagement and diversity, the latter achievement extending to the creation of the Cal State SB Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Board. The focus on student support Morales championed included the so-called Summer Bridge programs and strengthening ties with public K–12 school districts and community colleges in the Inland Empire to improve college attainment. He established the nonprofit Growing Inland Achievement to get more Inland Empire students into college. The university campus also began its first fundraising campaign that brought in $54 million, doubling the university’s endowment, thereby enhancing educational resources and campus facilities.
Under his leadership, 552,612 square feet of new space was added to both the San Bernardino and Palm Desert campuses, accommodating a growing student body.
Mexico recognized Morales the prestigious Ohtli Award, the highest civilian honor that can be bestowed upon a foreign recipient.
To Morales’ critics, however, those are achievements that likely would have manifested under any other leader during the 13 years he has been in place.
They have a far less charitable estimation of Morales both as a university president and and a person.
To a number of, though not all, university professors and the San Bernardino chapter of the California Faculty Association, Morales was a “walking scandal” who could do little right, was chauvinistic, weak, ineffective and damaging to the university and its reputation.
They claim gender discrimination flourished during Morales’ watch. They point to two lawsuits against the
California State University System stemming from what went on at Cal State San Bernardino, at both its San Bernardino and Palm Desert campuses, going back more than a half-dozen years.
In 2023, former Cal State University San Bernardino Vice Provost Clare Weber and Anissa Rogers, formerly the associate dean of the university’s Palm Desert campus, sued the California State University system, alleging they were constructively discharge of forced into retirement upon making reports of gender inequities, discrimination and harassment.
The suit alleged that Weber and Rogers suffered at the hands of Provost Rafik Mohamed, who served as the interim provost in 2022 and was appointed provost and vice president for the university’s division of academic affairs in January 2023, and then-Palm Desert Campus Dean Jake Zhu. Mohamed led the university’s largest division, oversaw five academic colleges, its Extended and Global Education program and the Palm Desert Campus. Mohamed and Zhu retaliated against the two women when Weber, who was characterized by her lawyer as “the lowest paid vice-provost in the CSU system” complained that female vice provosts employed at Cal State universities were underpaid in comparison to their male equivalents, and that this was particularly the case at the San Bernardino campus. Rogers alleged Zhu callously dismissed her complaints about male administrators berating a female employee during a 2021 meeting and then forced her into retirement. Morales did nothing to prevent Mohamed and Zhu from abusing Weber and Rogers, according to the suit.
When Rogers’ case went to trial last year, she prevailed, with the jury awarding her $6 million on the basis of the emotional stress she had endured. A decision was made in March to settle Weber’s case for $6 million.
According to the faculty union, Morales allowed the situation that resulted in the $12 million payout to Weber and Rogers and he was equally responsible for budget cuts to the university imposed by Sacramento after a state audit that found the university’s housing department was $8 million in debt.
Based upon incentive recruitment employment terms at the time of his hiring in 2012, Morales after a dozen years in the president’s post upon retirement can be deemed eligible for a one-time payment of up to a year of his current salary and placement into an academic position with the university or pursuit of a specialized educational project at the campus. Those incentive terms were eliminated by the Cal State system two years ago, but on the basis of major faux pas by other university administrators, they have been discontinued. It is unclear whether the university system is obliged to honor them in Morales’ case. The union is arguing that the incentives offered to university executives were conditional upon positive outcomes for the university. The erasure of the benefits generally based upon scandals involving other university presidents is justification for withdrawing them from Morales, the faculty union maintains. The California State University Board of Trustees should exercise its discretion and deny Morales the benefits, the faculty union contends.
-Mark Gutglueck