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University workers protest possible salary deductions

By Lauren Raab

July 2, 2006 9:00 p.m.

University of California workers gathered Thursday to protest
the possibility of having money deducted from their salaries and
put into the UC retirement fund, saying the university has not
adequately studied the fund’s financial health so salary
deductions may be unnecessary.

“The amount of effort (the UC) put into their projections
was really minimal,” said Max Hechter, a UCLA employee and
the president of the local chapter of the University Professional
and Technical Employees’ union.

Employees’ pensions and benefits come from the UC
Retirement Plan, but since 1990, neither the university nor its
employees have had to put money into the fund ““ interest and
investment profits earned by existing funds has been enough to
cover costs.

But in March the UC Board of Regents voted to reinstate
university and employee contributions to the retirement plan in
July 2007, saying interest and investment returns alone will soon
not be enough to pay for expenses.

“Since members stopped making contributions, (the UC
Retirement Plan’s) funded status has steadily
declined,” UC spokesman Paul Schwartz said in a statement.
“By all reasonable estimates, (the retirement plan) is
expected to become underfunded in the near future.”

The UC plans to instate the employee contributions gradually. In
a few years workers may have to contribute up to 8 percent of their
salaries to the fund, compared to less than 4 percent before 1990,
said Nicole Moore, an organizer for the American Federation of
State, County and Municipal Employees.

Employees will have their retirement plan contribution taken as
a percentage out of their pay check. This percentage will be added
incrementally, in addition to an already negotiated pay raise, over
the next few years, Noel Van Nyhuis, a former UC spokesman, has
said.

The UC Union Coalition countered with an analysis performed by
independent consultants Venuti & Associates, which said the
university’s analysis failed to consider several factors.

According to the Venuti & Associates report, the UC analysis
did not look at a wide enough range of data, has not updated some
of its underlying assumptions in years, and failed to take into
account Los Alamos laboratory workers’ exit from the UC
retirement plan.

“UC has not seen the union report being circulated so we
cannot comment on the analysis used or its conclusions,”
Schwartz said in a statement.

Workers throughout the UC system protested the possibility of
employee contributions to the retirement fund. At UCLA, workers
gathered on campus just south of the Semel Institute and marched to
the Wilshire Center to deliver a petition to the UC Medical
Center’s director of human resources and labor relations.

Workers voiced concerns about how the potential salary
deductions could affect the quality of work at UC facilities.

Dina Guerrero, a custodian at the UCLA schools of medicine and
dentistry, said she already gets paid less than $10 per hour and
must work another job as well to keep her finances afloat.

Moore said if salary deductions go into effect, fewer
high-quality employees will choose to keep their UC jobs.

“We believe that these cuts will ultimately affect
patients,” she said. “We don’t want to see the
quality of what’s going on here slip.”

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