About 300 Cal State Long Beach employees represented by the California State Employees Association will celebrate their legal victory over the California State University system today at 11 a.m. with a barbecue in front of the University Bookstore.

CSULB employees are currently receiving $1.5 million in retroactive pay, the highest amount of any CSU.

Statewide, some 4,000 workers represented by the CSEA will share as much as $20 million in back pay from the CSU system.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento announced its ruling in favor of the CSEA in December, but the complexity of the calculations in determining how much back pay is due to each eligible employee brought a nine month delay in the issuance of back pay checks.

"Reimbursements will generally range between $4,000 and $8,000 per worker," said J.W. Jimenez, director of CSEA's CSU division. "It took more than five years to get here through the courts. The courts ruled that CSU was wrong in withholding merit pay from these workers while new contracts were negotiated. Now CSU will pay the price of its actions."

According to a CSEA press release, the previous CSEA-CSU contract had expired, and the CSU system claimed it no longer had to pay merit salary adjustments (yearly step increases of about 5 percent) to workers who had not reached the top of their pay ranges.

In July of 1992, CSEA filed an unfair labor practice with the Public Employment Relations Board.

PERB issued a complaint against the CSU, stating that its actions against the CSEA were illegal.

In April of 1995, PERB dismissed the CSEA's complaint and unfair labor practice charge. CSEA sued, resulting in last December's decision by the 2nd District Court of Appeal to reverse the PERB decision and hold CSU's action to be illegal.

The court ruled that CSU must pay all CSEA-represented employees who were denied step increases back wages plus 7 percent interest accrued from June 1, 1992, to May 19, 1993.

"I think this is an important victory for CSEA," said Hubert Lloyd, bargaining unit representative for the technical division of the CSEA. "It reaffirms the bargaining rights a union has with its employer."

The CSEA represents about 1,000 CSULB workers in four bargaining units, including operations and health care support.

Statewide, the CSEA represents approximately 14,500 CSU system workers.