AAUP / AFT Affiliation Agreement

The AAUP and AFT have drafted a new affiliation agreement that will be voted on at the June AAUP meeting. Some details:

“Under the terms of this affiliation agreement, all AAUP members, by virtue of their membership in the AAUP, will also be members of the AFT/AFL-CIO… AAUP members and AAUP chapters will have access to AFT support and services, including specific AFT member benefits… This affiliation will not result in an increase in national AAUP dues and, for current AAUP members, AFT per capita will be covered as part of the AAUP dues… The national AAUP and its chapters will remain autonomous organizations with full control over their own finances, policies, programs, and staff. The national AAUP will continue to be governed by the AAUP Council; will continue to have its own committees; and will have complete autonomy over the Redbook, our policies and statements on behalf of the profession, investigations, censure, and sanction.”

This is what AAUP told CUCFA would be the effect of the affiliation to CUCFA/AAUP partner members:

“Assuming the proposed affiliation goes through at AAUP’s Biennial Meeting this June, CUCFA members will not see any appreciable change to their memberships. They will still be AAUP members, with all the rights and benefits conferred under that status and the CUCFA agreement. Their dues rate will continue to be the AAUP dues rate. They will, by virtue of being AAUP members, also become AFT members, with all the rights, privileges, etc., that go with that status. For AAUP advocacy and at-large members, which is the status that the UC members have in AAUP, their main interface remains the AAUP and their interaction with support and services will still be through the AAUP staff and leadership. They do have as “value added” access to AFT member benefits (discounts on mortgages, car purchases, etc.). But they are not required to pay any extra dues to AFT or any AFT subsidiary.”

More details (an overview of the agreement, a frequently asked questions document, and the agreement itself) are available to AAUP members on the AAUP website (member login required) at https://www.aaup.org/member-information-aaupaft-affiliation

UCOP Study Shows Decline in Faculty Compensation

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 market to 10% below market.
Health and welfare benefits fell from 6% above market in 2009 to 7% below market in 2014, primarily caused by higher medical employee contributions at higher salary bands compared to the market.
Changes to retirement plan designs since 2009 reduced positioning against market from 29% above market to 2% below market.
Total retirement decreased from 33% above market to 6% above market.
Total benefits decreased from 18% above market to 1% below market.

The Degradation of Faculty Welfare and Compensation

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 no longer treated equally. Different groups of faculty are increasingly pitted against each other as – depending on our age or where we live or when we were hired – we receive different levels of retirement, health and other benefits.

Faculty salaries were already uncompetitive. Even with the recently-announced 3% raise, they remain 10-15% below UC’s own comparator institutions (http://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/documents/accountabilityreport13.pdf) and a further 10% behind those of the private 4 — Stanford, Yale, Harvard and MIT –(http://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/documents/accountabilityreport13.pdf).

Back in 2009 strong benefits, in the form of pension and health care provisions, once allowed UC to excuse its uncompetitive salaries by reminding us of what it called our ‘total compensation package’ (http://compensation.universityofcalifornia.edu/total_rem_report_nov2009.pdf).

This is no longer true. Now, as continued austerity management grips University administrators, and campaigns are launched to divest public sector workers of their pensions and retiree healthcare, faculty are being stripped of these deferred (and other) benefits.

One reason faculty are largely unaware of the degradation of their benefits is that changes have been made incrementally and target different constituencies. Gone are the days when all faculty and retirees were treated equally and received the same benefits. And yet for all faculty these changes mean we are paying more and getting less.

Firstly, faculty are divided by a new two-tier pension system. The old pension, the so-called 1976 tier, has seen a steady escalation of employee contributions from 0% in 2009 to 8% in 2014. These raises alone mean that faculty take-home pay has deteriorated by as much as 3%.

The new pension introduced for those hired since 2013 has begun with a 7% employee contribution. Despite paying more new faculty get less. The minimum retirement age has been raised from 50 to 55, the retirement age for maximum pension has been raised from 60 to 65, and the lump sum cash-out and subsidized survivor benefits have been eliminated.

Secondly, although there is as yet no legal evidence that retiree health benefits are less ‘vested’ (and thus unalterable except by legislation) than pensions, they have been progressively stripped. And here again different groups of faculty are treated differently.

Since 2010 UC’s contribution to retiree health benefits has fallen from 100% to 70%, but this pales in comparison to the changes introduced in 2013 which have affected 50% of faculty and staff. All new hires, together with those with fewer than 5 years of service, or those whose age plus service is fewer than 50 years, will now receive nothing from UC towards their healthcare if they retire before 55. Meanwhile contributions for those retiring after 56 will be on a sliding scale (depending on length of service) beginning at just 5%!

Worse still, in what is being considered a pilot program by the Regents, retirees no longer living in California have been removed from UC’s insurance plans. Instead they will be given a lump sum of $3,000 per annum to help defray costs not covered by Medicare. This represents a significant shift of the risk and the responsibility for healthcare from UC on to retirees. If it generates the projected $700 million savings of total liability as reported by UCOP’s CFO to the regents this year, it is likely soon to be coming to a group of retirees near you.

Thirdly, in the fall, the majority of faculty and staff were forced to change their healthcare plan in little over two months. We were promised that these had been negotiated to secure great savings for UC and lower insurance rates for all UC employees. It quickly became clear that those lower monthly rates masked a huge turnover in eligible providers, geographically uneven coverage of service (across as well as between campuses), and considerably higher deductibles. It is too soon to calculate how much more faculty are paying for their healthcare, but once again we are certainly paying more for less.

It is time for faculty to wise up to this systematic and universal downgrading of our salaries and benefits that also sets different groups of us on different tracks. The contrast with the new contracts recently signed by CNA, UPTE and ACSFME is worth noting. In addition to significantly improved salaries, these unions have been able to maintain a single-tier pension (for an additional 1% contribution) and retain retiree health benefits.

So how will faculty respond? With a sigh of resignation? A determination to get an outside offer that would increase one’s personal compensation package? Or will we seek better mechanisms that would permit faculty to negotiate all elements of our compensation rather than have it decreed, and diminished, from on high?

Not a thumbs up moment for Janet in her new job

The University of Michigan has raided UC San Diego, hiring a pair of young computer scientists who’ve been drawing attention for their efforts to help Google find better ways to operate online. Jason Mars, an assistant professor, and Lingjia Tang, a member of the research faculty, decided to leave UCSD’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering only a year after they arrived. Mars is the first African American in the department’s history to hold a tenure track position.

“They’re both excellent researchers. This is the single biggest setback I’ve had as chair,” said Rajesh Gupta, who took over the fast growing department in 2010, and who made headlines in June when he negotiated an $18.5 million gift from an anonymous donor. Mars and Tang, who are married, have joined Michigan’s computer science department which, like UCSD’s, is ranked among the 20 best in the country by US News and World Report. The department hired the couple last year, naming Mars to a tenure track position and Tang to a researcher’s post. Michigan offered both of them tenure track jobs, an offer that UCSD later exceeded, Gupta said. Mars also has family ties to Michigan. The raid occurred in the spring as UCSD was preparing to expand faculty hiring…

Full story from the San Diego Union-Tribune at http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/sep/02/ucsd-michigan/

Public-Private Pay

From time to time, news sources such as the Sacramento Bee and the San Francisco Chronicle update their databases of pay of state employees including UC. Yours truly from time to time has posted objections on privacy and ID theft grounds to such posting and has challenged the news sources to post their own payroll data. Not surprisingly, they have yet to agree – and for good reason.

It’s not that there cannot be salary abuses – either in the public or the private sector. But there are ways to deal with that problem, mainly by posting pay by occupation without individual names, using distributions and charts, etc., or confining the by-name disclosures to top officials.

In any event, such postings bring about the expected angry comments by folks who are annoyed that anyone in the public sector gets paid more than they do, or for the wealthier critics, more than their cleaning help.

Along with this debate comes the general issue of whether public employees are paid more than private. As economists routinely point out, such comparisons of simple averages mean little unless there are adjustments for occupational composition and other factors relevant to pay. But such pointing out of the need for adjustment has never hindered popular comparison of the simple averages.

A variation of this practice occurred a couple of days ago in the Sacramento Bee when a report appeared noting that a Census Bureau comparison found that simple average public pay in California (all levels of government) was about a fourth higher than simple average U.S. pay for all states combined. See http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/08/californias-public-workers-among-nations-best-paid.html. The underlying Census report can be found at http://blogs.sacbee.com/the_state_worker/2013/08/california-high-on-list-of-highest-paid-government-employees.html

But as in other comparisons, you want to make adjustments. One is for the local labor market; what is the general level of pay in the private sector in a particular state? Last week, a database came online provided by the California Business Roundtable – a business/employers group – which takes available labor market and other data and provides convenient access. According to that source, annual public sector pay in California is about 5% below the private annual wage. Go to http://www.centerforjobs.org/profiles/california/ and scroll down towards the bottom. This finding is actually rather surprising result because public workers tilt toward white collar more than private and because of the quite large higher ed component of the public sector in California (including UC). But, again, it all goes to show that without adjustment for more detailed components of pay, comparisons of simple averages don’t tell you much.

It’s tough when you don’t know what the meaning is:

UC Payroll Data Online

You can find the data for calendar year 2012, including the chart above, at http://compensation.universityofcalifornia.edu/payroll2012/. [Click on the chart to enlarge it.] Among the interesting figures is that about one eighth of payroll goes to ladder faculty, another eighth to other instructors, and about 6% to TAs. By the way, if you don’t want to be in the database, apparently you need to become a student for part of the year:

Pursuant to federal student privacy laws, the names of all employees who were UC students (including medical residents) at any point during a given calendar year have been redacted and appear as ******. Source: https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/.

Cost of Living

We often make faculty salary comparisons based on nominal dollars. However, price levels (the “costs of living”) vary from location to location; a dollar may buy more or less depending on where you are. There have been private surveys that purport to tell you the relative price level in various locations but they typically have unknown methodology. Now the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis has released estimates of relative price levels by state and selected metro areas. Aboveyou can see the results by state for 2011. With the U.S. average = 100, some metro areas in California are San Francisco (118.1), Santa Cruz (116.8), Los Angeles (114.1), San Diego (113.5), Santa Barbara (104.7), Riverside (104.4), Sacramento (100.1), and Merced (94.3). Before you object to these numbers based on personal perceptions, note that a) I have used abbreviations for the metro areas (they don’t correspond to city boundaries), and b) that if there were measures available, they would show variations within metro areas by neighborhoods. [There doesn’t appear to be an index corresponding to Orange County, i.e., Irvine, but I took only a brief look.]

You can find the data release at http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/rpp/rpp_newsrelease.htm

By clicking on options on the right-hand side of the release, you can find an Excel sheet which has the metro areas above including a more complete description of the boundaries involved.

Note: Yours truly will be traveling for the next ten days or so and blogging may be limited. However, I am accompanied on my travels, so I won’t be like the fellow at the link below:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5ywcLXv-SA?feature=player_detailpage]

Lessons to be Learned

Today’s LA Times carries the story of two neuroscientists recruited by USC from UCLA:

Arthur Toga and Paul Thompson will move to the USC Keck School of Medicine campus next fall, along with scores of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staffers who now work at UCLA’s Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, known as LONI. In establishing a new institute at the USC campus in Boyle Heights, they will also move substantial government and private grants that fund the lab’s $12-million annual budget as well as some of the highly sophisticated equipment used to investigate the brain’s inner workings. (The move)…raises concerns about the ability of financially strapped public universities to fend off raids from deep-pocketed private colleges like USC.

The scientists did not divulge details of their new salaries and research funding but said they did not seek a counteroffer… According to a UC website of employee compensation, Toga was paid $1.06 million in 2011, including basic salary and extra money for research work. Thompson was listed at $421,150…

Toga said he did not want to disparage UCLA but said private schools “are often a little quicker on their feet.”…

Full story at http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-0510-usc-ucla-brain-research-20130510,0,6976660.story

Of course, Chancellor Block comments and says that although he is disappointed, not to worry, there is plenty left at UCLA. But that is not a good response. Let’s note that at UCLA, the LA Times had only to look up faculty pay on the website because of court decisions regarding pay at UC. USC also has complete access to the data. But no pay disclosure occurs, or is required, at a private university such as USC. There is also the observation about private universities being able to respond quicker. Sounds like plenty to worry about to yours truly. Sounds like the kind of story that should be trumpeted to the governor – who still harbors his youthful notions of “psychic income” for faculty – and to the legislature that is busy mandating this or that for the university and pursuing fantasies of saving money via online ed. Will we hear anything about these matters at the Regents meeting next week?

President Yudof is supposed to present a state of the university report to the Regents next week. Instead of the usual presentation about UC – despite budget cuts – still being the best public university, how about taking up these issues for real? After August, there will be a new UC president. Whatever political constraints there have been on Yudof in the past, they are gone now. Tell it like it is, Mark. We’ll be listening.

For the Record

Back in mid-December, the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) produced a report saying all was well with UC faculty compensation, despite concerns about pay lags. No one seems to have paid much attention to the LAO report so far, which is a Good Thing, since the report was poorly done. It is unclear what suddenly motivated the LAO to issue the report just when UC was entering intersession and the ability to respond was limited. In any event, the University Committee on Faculty Welfare (UCFW) prepared a response which was recently posted on the Academic Senate website. For the record – because you never know when someone might haul the LAO report out – here are some excerpts from UCFW’s rebuttal to LAO report: [Links to the full UCFW report and the LAO report are below.]

The UC Systemwide Committee on Faculty Welfare (UCFW) carefully studied the recent report on faculty salaries, recruitment, and retention released by the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO). The LAO’s major conclusions are the following: 1) total UC compensation is competitive with top universities; 2) few faculty members leave, and reasons other than salary are responsible for most faculty leaving; 3) the small number of tenured associate professors who leave shortly after receiving tenure is not a concern; and 4) UC continues to hire its top-choice candidates. UCFW questions the accuracy of these conclusions…

(P)rior to 2000, UC salaries closely matched the Comparison Eight average but started to lag behind the Comparison Eight universities shortly after 2000… The lag continues to grow. UC salaries now lag the Comparison Eight by more than 11%…

The LAO makes (an) error by relying upon UC’s most recent, but outdated, analysis of total remuneration from 2009. At that time, although faculty salaries lagged the Comparison Eight by about 10%, the value of UC’s retirement benefit partially compensated for the salary lag. This was entirely because employees were not required to make contributions to their retirement plan and not because the retirement benefits themselves were overly generous. The LAO overlooked the predictions in this study, as well as and the update to examine the competitiveness of the “New Tier” retirement plan, that the UC retirement plan would become uncompetitive when faculty made a 5% contribution to retirement, as they are doing in 2012-13… If employee contribution rates rise even higher (6.5% for current employees in July, 2013 and higher thereafter), then UC benefits will not compensate for below-market UC faculty salaries whatsoever…

The LAO concluded that “most faculty do not leave UC or reject UC job offers due to compensation” on the basis of some exit surveys performed in the mid-2000’s and summarized in … the LAO report. The LAO noted that several reasons were given. “Salary” was cited by 33% of those who rejected UC offers and by 37% of those who left UC. UCFW notes, first, that “salary” was the most prevalent reason for both categories. Secondly, an increase in salary could certainly mitigate concerns about “housing problems” (cited by 22% of those who rejected UC offers and by 13% of faculty who left) and “cost of living [besides housing]” (cited by 11% of those who rejected UC offers and by 7% of those who left). Taking into account not only the issue of “salary” but also the separately enumerated issues that an increase in salary could mitigate, then salary-related issues could account for up to 66% of the reasons for rejecting UC offers and up to 57% of the reasons that faculty leave UC. This is quite the opposite conclusion of the LAO…

UCFW is uncertain what point the LAO attempts to make with the data on the fate of Assistant Professors hired in 2000-01. These data have no reference point, either from when UC was in a more favorable economic environment than in 2000-01, or from other universities when the UC data were collected. In contrast to the LAO, UCFW believes that a 10% rate of departure of young professors after receiving tenure is of great concern. UC heavily invests in assistant professors, especially in science and engineering, by providing them with start-up packages worth several hundred thousand dollars each…

UCFW members, based on their experiences on search committees in their home departments, question whether the data provided to LAO by the UC administration concerning the top choices in faculty searches is truly representative of the current competitive job market. …(T)he data are almost 10 years old and do not reflect the current economic conditions in which UC competes for new assistant professors…

The full UCFW report is at: http://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/committees/ucfw/UCFWreLAOFacultyRecruitmentandRetentionMarch2103.pdf

The December LAO report is at: http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/PubDetails.aspx?id=2675

And – for the record – we’ll try to maintain a sunny attitude and be optimistic that the LAO will do better next time:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vjz6Qr1K8ds?feature=player_detailpage]

Legislative Analyst Says Everything’s OK With UC Faculty Pay

Legislative Analyst’s summary:

In this report, we assess UC’s ability to recruit and retain tenured and tenure-track faculty. We find that (1) UC has been hiring candidates who have received their highest degree from some of the most selective universities in the nation, (2) UC has a long history of hiring its top choice faculty candidates, (3) most new entry-level faculty stay at UC long enough to earn tenure, (4) less than 2 percent of faculty resign from UC each year, and (5) UC’s faculty compensation is competitive with other top universities. These findings indicate that UC generally has been successful in its faculty recruitment and retention efforts. In light of these findings, coupled with the continuing need to prioritize limited state funding, the Legislature will need to assess the relative trade-offs between providing funding for faculty salary increases and other competing budget priorities involving faculty and higher education more generally.

Full report at http://lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/edu/uc-faculty/uc-faculty-121312.pdf

So not to worry!!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0DusO6ipLw?feature=player_detailpage]