UC Rewards Top Administrators, But Aims at Workers' Pensions, Student Fees

Members of UPTE/CWA Local 9119 at the University of California rally against unfair cuts to workers and students.

The University of California is proposing $500 million in budget cuts to help reduce the state’s deficit. The problem is that most of those cuts are aimed at UC staff and faculty’s pension and health care benefits and at students, who face a big jump in fees.

The 12,000 faculty and staff, members of UPTE-CWA Local 9119, are pushing back, along with student groups and other supporters.

The proposed pension and health care cuts are extreme. The net retirement income of a worker who retires at age 60 and earns $26,000 a year would plummet from $12,200 a year to just $1,800. “Politicians are using the economy and our state’s budget crisis as a reason to destroy workers’ pensions,” Local 9119 President Jelgar Kalmijn said.

For students, UC’s Board of Regents has hiked tuition costs again, this time by 8 percent for fall 2011. Tuition has soared by 40 percent since 2009, putting it out of reach for many students. Attending UC is now more expensive than many private colleges in California.

Making students and activists even angrier are fat raises and new executive-level positions the university created. Kalmijn, a staff researcher at UC San Diego, said the Board of Regents approved raises for administrators as high as $132,000 a year and added a chief ethics and compliance officer position with a $230,000 salary.

“The university’s decision to give big raises to some of its highest-paid administrators is unconscionable considering the huge financial sacrifices that the university is trying to force on students, workers and their families,” he said.

UPTE and unions throughout the state have formed a broad coalition to mobilize against the cuts.