CSUN University News Clippings

UC regent panel backs budget-cutting plan

(July 16, 2009)

By Laurel Rosenhall

The impact of the state’s fiscal crisis on the University of California came into focus Wednesday, as the governing Board of Regents preliminarily approved sweeping employee pay cuts and chancellors detailed the services and programs they’re slashing on their campuses.

The UC regents’ committee on finance approved President Mark Yudof’s plan for furloughing employees during one year beginning in September – a cut that will close part of UC’s $813 million deficit. The plan takes a sliding scale approach that cuts pay between 4 percent and 10 percent according to workers’ salaries. The full Board of Regents is expected to approve the plan today.

It calls for the vast majority of UC’s 180,000 employees to take unpaid days off – the exact number of days will vary by pay level – but gives workers and their supervisors flexibility to choose the dates. Yudof has said he expects professors not to take furloughs on days they teach class.

But Mary Croughan, a professor at UC San Francisco, who chairs the statewide academic senate, said the furloughs at UC should be similar to those at the Department of Motor Vehicles, where “you go to get service and the doors are locked.”

“A major point both the faculty and the staff made was to make the furlough days visible,” she said at the regents meeting in San Francisco.

It remains to be seen how the furloughs will affect students because the plan gives each campus a lot of leeway in implementing them. And it exempts about a quarter of UC employees, those whose salaries are covered by grants from the federal government or private industries.

Still, UC professors warned regents Wednesday that the furloughs will have dire consequences on university quality. Faculty may leave for other schools that pay better, they said, and once the top-flight professors leave, the best students will follow.

Sandra Faber, a professor of astronomy at UC Santa Cruz, said the state is hurting its economic recovery by taking UC funds.

“The university is the most powerful economic engine in the state,” said Faber, who presented a letter signed by more than 300 distinguished UC scientists. “If you don’t believe that, just think about what raises the tax base – it’s knowledge and the new wealth that knowledge creates.”

Professors and UC’s other non-unionized employees will take the furloughs without putting up much of a fight. But the system will have to negotiate the furloughs with more than a dozen labor unions that represent other UC workers.

Scores of workers from at least three labor unions protested the furlough plan at Wednesday’s meeting. They said the university should dip into its reserve funds instead of cutting worker pay.

“At this point our unions will not agree to the furloughs or pay cuts, and all these terms still have to be negotiated,” said Kevin Scott, a UC Davis research associate and a member of the University Professional and Technical Employees union.

Officials say the furloughs would save more than $200 million, covering roughly a quarter of the UC deficit. Increases in student fees approved in May will cover another quarter of the deficit.

The rest of UC’s budget balancing will be done by individual campuses.

On Wednesday, chancellors from the 10 campuses described the kinds of cuts they are making: UC Berkeley is reducing hours the library is open, UC San Diego has laid off more than 200 employees, UCLA will cut its course offerings by 10 percent and UC Davis is holding off on new buildings for the music and engineering departments.

Regents showed no joy in approving the budget plan. Richard Blum said that Schwarzenegger had reneged on his agreement to fund UC’s enrollment growth.

Regent Bonnie Reiss said UC needed to launch a massive publicity campaign, the way teachers unions are doing about cuts to K-12 schools.

“We know that this vote will definitely lead to a decline in the quality of education at UC,” Reiss said. “Commissions and task forces and white papers are not enough moving forward. We have to do a campaign.”

Publication: Sacramento Bee