This story was produced in partnership with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley Journalism.
For years, dozens of custodians at Oakland’s airport took home extraordinary paychecks, inflated by overtime. Some janitors made $200,000 or more in total annual pay, according to payroll records obtained by UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program and The Oaklandside. Overtime payouts peaked in 2023, when eight airport janitors took home more in wages than the city’s mayor.
But in February 2025, the union representing custodians blew the whistle. In a grievance letter to the Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport leadership, SEIU 1021 alleged that managers were rigging the process by steering lucrative overtime shifts to favored workers. And the union made an explosive allegation: the favored workers paid kickbacks to managers for more overtime…