uc-aft unit 17 negotiations

To UC-AFT Librarians --

Below please find the link to the annual report of the Regent's Committee on Compensation on executive-level pay and benefits.  This report was presented at the telephonic meeting of the Regents last week.  At that meeting, record-setting salaries were approved for new Chancellors at UCSF and UC Davis, while student fees were increased by 9.3%.
Note as well that the Regents' Committee justifies this extra pay and benefits for UC's highest-paid employees on the ground that this expenditure represents only .54% of UC's overall annual payroll of over 9 billion dollars. Why worry about so small a cost, the report implies?

The report states repeatedly that bonuses and competitive pay are necessary to recruit and retain the best professionals. For example:

"In order to compete in these markets for the highest quality individuals, UC must and should reflect the same market practices, or our top quality health sciences professionals, for example, will merely transfer to a hospital that will pay competitively."

Why does UC so readily use this kind of market analysis for senior executives, coaches, and doctors, but fail to see that it also applies to its librarians?

Finally, note that in the "The UCBudget -- Myths and Facts" document (recently produced by President Yudof's brand new $4 million marketing department), the University states the following:

"Markets are a reality. The University needs to be able to pay market wages to attract and retain quality people. Markets are also different for different employment groups, and the University needs to be competitive in the markets that apply to each employment group. All groups deserve respect and a competitive wage, but the University will need to pay more for certain jobs than it does for others, just as all other employers do."

"Myths and Facts" then proudly points to the example of the new $64 million AFSCME contract as an example of efforts to address market gaps "at every level of the University." As the pamphlet notes, "...salaries for UC service workers are now comparable to -- and in some cases higher than -- similar positions at CSU."

(Oh, the irony...haven't we been saying some stuff about CSU salaries for a while now?)

Please do take the time to examine the Regent's report on executive compensation and all of its details, especially in the attachments. Why are extra bonus payments to UC's already highly-compensated executives and coaches a higher priority than a fair salary fix for UC's librarians?

UC has the money to pay out this $4.85 million in bonus pay to 111 individuals who already are very high earners. UC claims to have the concern for market equity and salary fairness across all ranks. Yet it has nothing to offer its badly undercompensated librarians.

On April 30, UC-AFT organized events at every campus to draw attention to the fact that undergraduate education at UC is under fire. It is a short-sighted "solution" to budget shortfalls to fail to provide adequate resources to the libraries and to UC lecturers, especially when the University's own audited financial statements show that it has over 5 billion dollars in unrestricted net assets.  This posting spotlights some of these actions.


This was the scene at UC Santa Cruz last Thursday, where over 350 turned out to a UC-AFT sponsored event to protest UC's apparent budget priorities-- and protect undergraduate education. Unit 17 Chief Negotiator Mike Rotkin was the emcee of the event. As if to prove the point of the rally, Mike received a layoff notice the next day from his job as coordinator of field studies for the Community Studies major at UCSC -- in this position, Mike works with dozens of UCSC undergraduates each year as they complete the field work component of their academic program. Other long-time lecturers who have anchored critical undergraduate programs are facing similar threats. Mike and his Santa Cruz colleagues and students now are engaged in a fight to save the Community Studies major, a signature program of the UCSC campus, and are otherwise mobilizing to protect the instructional program for undergraduates. For more information, see their Facebook page: "Coalition to Save Community Studies."