Southwestern College is paying Rose DelGaudio a salary of $330,000 to work as the vice president of human resources, making her one of the highest paid community college employees in the state of California.
The governing board members unanimously approved DeGaudio’s salary at the May 14 monthly board meeting. Although the price is “hard to swallow,” SWC President Dr. Kindred Murillo said the board wanted to invest in a strong HR department.
“We have serious work to do in human resources and (DelGaudio) is willing to stay with us for two years,” Murillo’s message to SWC staff. “While we have good people, we do not have solid processes and procedures, and we need good committed, experienced leadership.”
Governing Board Trustee Tim Nader said he does not completely agree with the high pay that DelGaudio will earn, but recognizes that it’s because she lost benefits when coming out of retirement.
“I mentioned that personally, I don’t think that an administrator should make $330,000 a year,” Nader said. “On the other hand, if I put myself in DelGaudio’s situation, we’re pulling her out of retirement and she’s going to lose her retirement earnings to come back to work for us.”
A number of SWC classified employees followed Silvia Nogales, Union President of California School Employees Association (CSEA), to the board meeting to rally against the district’s decisions. Nogales said classified employees have been trying to get financial proposals from the district to help upgrade their contracts, but were rejected due to claims of financial hardships.
“The executive team, which includes all the vice presidents and the president, gets paid very well to do their jobs,” Nogales said. “If they do them well or not, that remains to be seen. But classified professionals at this point have gotten very little. So while we have been negotiating with the district on a number of monetary items, we’ve been denied.”
Edmund Guerrero, chief union steward of CSEA and an instructional computer technician said the decision made at the board meeting was demoralizing for classified employees. Now that the votes have gone through, some changes will be made in how the union leadership approaches negotiations with the district.
“A majority of the classified employees are loyal to the institution, they’re here because they really love what they do,” said Guerrero. “We love the students, we want to make a difference for the students. But dealing with the administration definitely brings demoralization.”
DelGaudio said she is already working on a reorganization of the HR department. Among her first priorities is hiring a director of HR.
“Up to this point we haven’t had the staffing structure that we need, and so there are plans to reorganize human resources,” said DelGaudio. “There are also a number of business processes that need to be revamped, so those are some major operational needs to be addressed in order to create more effective and efficient systems for the district.”
Nader said he hopes that by the time DelGaudio is done, the board will no longer be hearing the same kind of complaints.
“I expect at the end of her time here, we’re gonna be able to look back and say we got our money’s worth,” Nader said. “That our classified employees in particular are going to be saying, ‘we recognize now that the district does value us.’’’
Nora Vargas, governing board vice president, also spoke out about her reasons voting yes for DelGaudio. There are many other things she would like to spend the resources on but believes that they can’t attend to it now because the college does not have a working HR department.
At the board meeting, Vargas said DelGaudio will be held accountable to make sure the students, staff, faculty, and classified workers are listened to when they go to the HR department.
“There is accountability here,” Vargas said. “We’re gonna be holding her accountable to make sure that each one of you are heard. And each one of you have somebody that you can talk to and achieve all the things you need.”
Nogales said she speaks for the CSEA classified workers and says that they do not feel valued by the administration. Many of the employees have been providing service for the district for numbers of years, some even for three to four decades feeling as if they have been unheard. Nogales tried to make her point to the Governing Board that they seem to put more importance on their own administrative ranks.
“For us to not get any kind of movement in regards to things that benefit us, that hurts. It really hurts,” Nogales said. “I would say a majority of all of our employees work really hard. They are loyal, dedicated employees that come to work everyday and have stayed with the district for 40 years and to come all this way and retire with this much, I’m sorry. It’s shameful, it’s embarrassing.”
Nogales added that the union plans on continuing to push the district for what she describes as a more level playing field.
“If anything, these votes on the administrative salaries have awoken a bear in us,” she said. “We’re gonna stand up, and we’re gonna ask for what we deserve. It’s time. We’ve waited way too long and we’re not gonna give up. We’re not gonna give up until we see some salary justices, until we see the district do right by our employees.”
