Fairness?

In one of the most disturbing turns in the whole story of the furloughs at UC, it would appear that the salary cuts are far from equitable and progressive, as UCOP's propaganda machine would instead have it.

In a statement by Bob Samuels, President of UC-AFT (the union that represents lecturers at UC) it is pointed out how the salary cuts are based on base pay only rather than total compensation. As it was made clear at the time of the compensation scandal, the two are very much different at the University of California.

Consider the case of Jeff Tedford, Head Coach of Intercollegiate Athletics at UC Berkeley and apparently the highest paid UC employee. Tedford's base pay is a "measly" $225K, but his total compensation is over $2.3M. Not all of that is salary, most likely (total compensation includes retirement and other benefits etc.) but a lot it is. Why is Tedford going to lose only $22K instead of $230K? And since we are at it — why is the Berkeley coach the highest paid employee at UC?

Hats off to Samuels and to Remaking the University for bringing this up.

Equally interesting a press release (PDF) by the University Professional & Technical Employees: at the same time as UCOP and the Regents slashed salaries left and right (ahem, modulo the above qualifications), they also increased salaries for a number of administrative positions. One example already mentioned on this blog is Linda Katehi, the newly appointed Davis Chancellor, whose salary is 27% higher than that of her predecessor, and who come to Davis followed by the cloud of the University of Illinois admissions scandal. But there are many more cases like this.

Reading these contributions but AFT and UPTE brings up once again the question: why aren't UC faculty unionized?