Given the current budget crisis in California, and no assurance of increased revenue, it is questionable whether any employee of the University of California should receive a salary increase. But in a civil and just society, one would hope that if any university salaries are raised, it won’t be at the expense of students, and would benefit those with the most need.

This is not the case with respect to the planned 3 percent salary increase for what, according to the Los Angeles Times, is 78,000 UC employees. UC will raise the salaries this fall of non-union staff who are paid under $200,000, as well as those of all but the highest-paid faculty.

It’s old news that in recent years the highest-level faculty and staff have been handed significant raises — 288 received $100,000 increases. Now, the university wants to be “fair” to the majority of the faculty and non-union staff, who haven’t received increases in four years, according to some news sources.

If you are an administrative staff member at the University of California and are at the lower end of the pay scale, you are a union member and you are considered a “clerical.” The higher-paid non-union administrative staff who will receive the fall increases already earn significantly more than the union-represented clerical staff.

What the UC administration has managed to gloss over in yet another rush to increase salaries is that the union-represented clericals haven’t had a contract in several years and so haven’t had salary increases either.

A good example of the insensitivity and ignorance, and perhaps even paternalism, of the university administration on the UC Davis campus with respect to the status of UC’s lower-paid staff is the emailed “Staff Voice” newsletter dated Sept. 8.

The newsletter is a publication of the Staff Assembly, which appears to have been organized to espouse the UC company line. Indeed, the web page for the Staff Assembly declares “Staff Assembly is an advisory group to UCD administration and also responds to administrative requests.”

The newsletter, which all staff receive, gushes “thanks” to “President (Mark) Yudof for the courage, even during these budget times, to recognize the importance of staff by allowing pay increases and being clear and consistent that this is a ‘merit’ compensation amount. We see this as exceptional during these days where the budgets are scrutinized and there are political consequences in offering any type of pay increases.”

It continues, “For President Yudof and the Regents, we offer them an ‘exceeds expectations’ in braving the politics and moving forward with the program.”

Presumably, those of us who won’t receive the raise don’t merit one, though there is no mention of that nor of those of us who don’t even have a contract. We are a group that is especially at risk in the next impending layoffs.

Clericals who process or see the payroll actions know it simply isn’t true that faculty and non-union staff salaries have remained stagnant over the past four years.

An argument can be made that in order to keep the faculty, we need to pay them more, but not because they’ve received nothing during this time period. Though the faculty salary ladder hasn’t changed since 2007, the vast majority of faculty continued to receive merit increases or promotions, most going through cycles every two or three years, and some accelerating their personnel actions and corresponding salaries. Quite a number have retention and off-scale salaries, over and above their base salaries.

Faculty are paid for nine months of work which is paid out over 12 months. In this way, without paying them more than 100 percent time, “summer salary” can be paid to them out of grant monies, if they have them. And many do.

It’s also true that many non-union staff employees have received salary increases in the past four years, so-called “equity” raises. Because they aren’t unionized, this can be done without the level of scrutiny that would be given to union employees.

UC is a public university. But on campus, one increasingly hears that UC is more private than public. The administration wants to have it both ways; it’s private as a defense against the calls for more transparency and public when it comes to asking the state, actually the taxpayers of California, for more public funds.

If UC is private, it is easier to give up the goal of the master plan to educate the young people of California and so more convenient for increasing student tuition and recruiting higher-paying students from other states, other countries.

It’s also easier to ignore the lower-paid workers, and, now especially, those who manage the faculty’s grants, coordinate their merit and promotion actions, update their salary data, process their travel and entertainment reimbursements, counsel and comfort their students, and are on the job throughout the summer.

— Carol Crabill is a union-represented staff member in the mathematics department at UC Davis.

Comments

comments