As the increasingly unpopular UC Board of Regents prepares to meet next month right here at UCSD, there will be plenty of items to consider ‘mdash; specifically, all things related to money, because the university, frankly, doesn’t ever seem to have enough, except to fill the already bloated pockets of its administrators.
Faced with dwindling state support and rising operating costs, the regents look certain to raise student fees by nearly 10 percent next year in an effort to maintain services.
But student fees aside, regents will also be considering a plan developed by UC President Mark G. Yudof outlining unpaid leave-of-absence procedures for employees systemwide. Meant to serve as a legal framework allowing campuses to determine their own furlough protocols, the plan in effect will just end up screwing over another vulnerable group: UC workers.
After allegedly freezing the salaries of 300 top executives earlier this year and enacting a hiring freeze (measures the university itself has already broken by hiring two new executives and offering a hefty pre-emptive retention pay increase to another exec), administrators are now counting on workers to bear the brunt of its funding shortage. In effect, Yudof is leaving the door wide open for employees to be sent home on unpaid leaves in an effort to conserve cash ‘mdash; employees who barely make ends meet now and who remain underpaid (if we speak in terms of market competitiveness, jargon the university loves throwing around) despite recent contractual agreements to the contrary.
The answer to the university’s funding shortage should not be to shove this expense onto the backs of workers and students. The only way to solve this problem is with policies that target the university’s administrative salaries. If the regents were serious about its commitment to serving these groups, they would end executive pay hikes, not raise student fees and impose mandatory worker furloughs.