Beyond the Headlines
The headline on a story in today’s Sacramento Beereads:
The headline on a story in today’s Sacramento Beereads:
The UCLA Faculty Association is part of a UC-wide coalition of faculty associations known as CUCFA–the Coalition of UC Faculty Associations. Through CUCFA, UC faculty are able to address the UC Office of the President on issues of importance to faculty, their students, and staff. Below is a round-up of recent communication between CUCFA and UCOP. UC Union Coalition on Health Insurance Costs CUCFA signed on to a joint letter from unions representing employees across the UC system expressing concern with large increases in the cost of health insurance. The unions requested a meeting to “address what appears to be…
In April, the Council of UC Faculty Associations drafted a letter of concern over proposed changes to UC employee health insurance options. Over 2,500 faculty system-wide added their names in support of these concerns. Now we have a response from the UC Office of the President (UCOP): Subject: Health care options letter Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 23:40:06 +0000 From: President at UCOP dot edu To: info at cucfa dot org Dear Professor Hays: Thank you for sharing the Council of UC Faculty Associations’ letter of April 7 to President Napolitano regarding the possible restructuring of healthcare plans available to…
A year ago Colleen Lye and James Vernon, co-chairs of the Berkeley Faculty Association, drew the attention of faculty across the ten campuses of the University of California to the continuing degradation of their pensions, benefits and salaries. Increasing employee contributions to health insurance and pensions were compounding the negative impact of slow salary group, they argued, and retirees faced fewer choices for healthcare. Now UCOP’s own study of total remuneration has confirmed much of their argument. The executive summary of this document contains the following depressing bullet points: Between 2009 and 2014, UC’s total remuneration fell from 2% below…
Colleen Lye and James Vernon (UC Berkeley Faculty Association) UC faculty need to wake up to the systematic degradation of their pay and benefits. In 2009, when the salary furlough temporarily cut faculty salaries between 6 and 10%, faculty were outraged. Yet since then our compensation has been hit by a more serious, and seemingly permanent, double blow. First, despite modest salary rises of 3% and 2% in October 2011 and July 2013, faculty take-home pay has been effectively cut as employee contributions to pension and healthcare have escalated. Faculty now pay more for retirement and healthcare programs that offer less. Secondly, faculty are…
From time to time, we have provided reminders about email problems. One problem – which we have noted – is that at a public university, your emails may be subject to public documents requests. Another problem is that hackers may try to get into your email account through “phishing,” probably to use it to send out scam messages to your contacts. Such an event seems to have occurred at UC-Davis: Hackers compromised the email accounts of three UC Davis doctors last month, potentially gaining access to personal or medical information on as many as 1,800 patients, the university announced Monday… …
Following the earlier lead of UCLA, all UC campuses today become smoke-free zones, including such products as e-cigarettes. According to a UC media release: …Effective Jan. 1, 2014, the University of California will be entirely smoke and tobacco free. Smoking and the use of all tobacco products including cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cigars, snuff, water pipes, pipes, hookahs, chew and any other non-combustible tobacco product will be prohibited across all campuses and facilities, including inside buildings, outdoor areas and sidewalks, parking lots, and residential housing areas. This is a major change for many people and will require all members of the university…