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Monday, March 12, 2012

Such Harsh Punishment!

The University of California, Berkeley, has demoted and reduced the salary of a veteran administrator accused of improperly giving pay raises to an employee with whom she was having a sexual relationship. 
Diane Leite, 47, a former assistant vice chancellor in the Research Enterprise Services department, pushed through five raises in two years for Jonathan Caniezo…  Caniezo, a 30-year-old purchasing manager, saw his pay rise from less than $70,000 in 2007 to more than $110,000 in 2010, according to university records obtained by the newspaper.  Caniezo's direct supervisor had opposed the raises, arguing that he had not earned them, according to a report by school investigators…  
After investigators found that Leite violated the university's sexual harassment policy, she was demoted March 1 from her position as assistant vice chancellor. Her pay was cut from about $188,000 to $175,000... 
Full story at: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/12/4331290/uc-berkeley-manager-demoted-over.html
There are some quaint 19th century ideas that might be relevant:
Update: The San Francisco Chronicle picked up the story with this info:
...Leite told investigators she didn't know the relationship violated UC's sexual harassment policy. Yet Leite had completed sexual harassment training three times, in 2006, 2009 and 2011, the report says. Caniezo took the training twice. The report says Leite also put pressure on another employee to sign off on the pay hikes. Records show that Caniezo got a raise to $107,000 in August 2010. He received additional monthly stipends of $1,118 from September 2009 to August 2010. After that, the amount dropped to $892. In July 2011, his salary grew to $110,210. The employee told to approve the extra pay "began arguing" with Leite in January 2010 "because she felt that Leite was providing (Caniezo) with compensation that he had not earned," the report says.
Leite told investigators she did not recall a disagreement. Text messages show otherwise, the report says. It concludes that Leite's "ongoing romantic relationship with (Caniezo) more likely than not provided the underlying motivation for her support of this salary action." UC system officials defended the strength of the sexual harassment policy, which says employees may be fired for sexual harassment. "Berkeley made a decision to handle this as they saw fit," UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein said.

Full article at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/12/BAKM1NJMJT.DTL

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

All this during a time when the rest of the UC Berkeley staff suffered through furloughs and layoffs. In addition to the fortunate Mr. Caniezo, there seemed to be a trend for staff in certain favored offices to get significant pay raises the year before the furloughs began. Therefore, while we all "suffered" the same furlough, those people were, even after a 6 or 7% pay reduction, receiving more salary than they had the year before. The rest of us received no salary increase what so ever and therefore got to count our pennies during the furlough year.