UC faculty, staff to receive merit-based salary increases

Faculty and staff at the University of California will enter the school year with the possibility of a raise.

UC President Mark Yudof sent a letter to campus chancellors Wednesday outlining a plan to give non-unionized staff members paid less than $200,000 and all faculty members an increase in pay. The plan was initially proposed last November.

The plan comes after July’s approval of a 9.6 percent tuition increase for UC students.

The estimated costs of the merit salary raises is $140 million, with $22.5 million of those funds coming from student tuition and fees, said UC spokesperson Steve Montiel. Montiel added that this figure only adds up to 16 percent of the entire funding and that a large majority of the money came from sources other than state funds including medical center revenues, contracts and grants.

Forty thousand faculty members as well as 38,000 staff members in the UC system will be eligible for raises beginning in September, Montiel said.

The raises are a tool to retain and recruit faculty members who are increasingly being courted by competing institutions, Yudof wrote in his letter.

“University quality cannot be compromised, and our excellent professors and researchers are the fountainhead of that quality,” Yudof added.

Depending on their rank, faculty members receive pay raises every two to three years upon positive reviews, Montiel said. With the additional merit-based increases, faculty members would receive a pay increase this October based on their most recent review.

For non-unionized members, President Yudof sees it as a matter of fairness for staff members who have not received merit or cost of living wages in four years, Montiel said.

“It’s a way to reward these people who worked hard and took cuts during the furlough program and also a way to balance fairness against fiscal pressures,” Montiel said.

Each non-represented staff member will be reviewed this fall. Pending a positive review, staffers will receive a pay raise, Montiel said. The three percent raise is a tool, and some staffers may receive less or more than that guideline, Montiel added.

Pay raises for staffers would be effective immediately.

“People who are getting these merit raises are people who students encounter on campus every day, whether it’s professors or people running the services,” Montiel said. “These people have been working really hard taking pay cuts these last four years who haven’t had a merit raise or a cost of living raise. … It’s good for everyone to have staff and faculty who feel that meritorial services are being acknowledged and rewarded.”