Just two weeks after the UC Board of Regents awarded salary increases to several top executives, UC President Mark G. Yudof introduced a plan last week that would reduce UC employee salaries and implement furloughs in an effort to combat the state budget crisis. The plan will be presented at the regents’ May meeting at UCSD.
‘My goal is to produce for consideration by the regents, in May, a flexible regental standing order that would serve as a broad legal framework to allow for both systemwide and campus-by-campus furloughs and salary reductions, should deteriorating financial conditions so require,’ Yudof said in a statement last week.
Yudof also advised that the roles and responsibilities of the regents, chancellors, president and academic senates be defined to accurately determine the necessity and extent of furloughs and salary reductions at each campus.
Factors to be considered would include the maintenance of medical center operations, the costs of preserving public safety, honoring existing union contracts and following governmental regulations.
‘Only when we have in place these decision-making processes should we move forward with the actions necessary to respond to our changing fiscal situation,’ Yudof said.
The proposal follows the regents’ decision earlier this year to freeze the salaries of 300 top UC executives after the state cut $115 million in funding from the UC system. UC officials project that the deficit will climb to $450 million within the next two years due to the rising operational costs.
According to Julian Posadas, executive vice president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents service workers universitywide, top university executives have compromised little compared to union workers, who ‘mdash; despite their recent contract renewals ‘mdash; are still paid below the state average.
‘We hear cuts, but these cuts do not affect high executives and the UC Office of the President,’ Posadas said. ‘We feel the cuts need to come from where there is a budget, but we don’t hear talk about [Yudof’s] salary being frozen or any cuts about his wages being cut at all.’
Posadas added that Yudof has not considered that any cuts to underrepresented worker salaries or the possibility of mandatory furloughs to all workers would compromise the communal aspect of the university.
‘It’s going to affect the campus community because we won’t be able to provide quality work to faculty and staff,’ he said. ‘We don’t see President Yudof addressing real issues, like how students and communities will be affected by these furloughs and layoffs.’
Currently, the university’s payroll, which includes over 170,000 full-time and part-time faculty and staff, amounts to roughly $9 billion annually ‘mdash; not including medical and retirement benefits.
Although roughly 60,000 (35 percent) of those employees are protected by labor contracts that cannot be modified without union approval, the university still has the authority to implement furloughs and layoffs on these workers. Yudof concedes that while UC emplo
yees are an indispensable part of the university, budgetary woes can no longer sustain previous UC spending, making cuts to employee salaries necessary.
‘As we confront all of these financial challenges, we must acknowledge that the university’s greatest asset ‘mdash; its human capital ‘mdash; comprises a significant amount of its budget,’ he said. ‘More than 70 percent of our core budget is devoted to faculty and employee salary and benefits.’
According to UC spokesman Paul Schwartz, further analysis will determine which employees will be impacted by the cuts. He added that Yudof’s plan is not definite and represents one possible option for the university.
‘[We] shouldn’t assume it’s going to happen ‘mdash; it may not, but the president wants to be prepared in case we think we need to move in this direction,’ Schwartz said. ‘It certainly would be looked upon as a last resort, as we’re undertaking a broad range of measurements to try to cope with the state funding shortfall.’
Posadas said workers are prepared to fight against any threats of salary cuts or furloughs, should the plan be favored by the regents next month.
‘I think that our workers ‘mdash; low-wage workers and any other workers on campus, particularly those that don’t have contracts, like clerical workers and thousands of technical workers ‘mdash; need to know that we do have a voice and we will be stepping up and holding UC accountable,’ Posadas said.
Readers can contact Joyce Yeh at [email protected].