Month: March 2014

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    The Degradation of Faculty Welfare and Compensation

    Byuclafaculty

    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…

  • How to respond to eroding pay and benefits?

    Byuclafaculty

    In case you missed it, UC Berkeley Faculty Association co-chairs Coleen Lye and James Vernon have penned a sobering letter to their colleagues across the UC system.  It’s time to wake up and take notice of the piecemeal erosion of our pay and benefits, they say.  More specifically: Despite modest pay bumps in 2011 and 2013, increases in pension and health insurance payments mean our take home pay is going down. The new two-tiered pension means faculty hired after 2013 get less generous retirement benefits for roughly the same cost as everyone else Current retirees are now paying 30% of…