University of California employees received close to one billion dollars in extra pay from 2006 to 2007, a 6.4 percent increase from the previous fiscal year.
The extra pay, known as above-base pay, is any additional compensation given to employees, mostly consisting of health sciences faculty members, that is not base salary or overtime.
The extra pay is given to doctors for medical care they give patients, faculty for research and teaching they do during the summer, and as payment to faculty or senior administrators as part of recruitment to the University, according to the 2006-2007 Employee Compensation report released in October.
The report states that employees received $917 million in above-base pay this past fiscal year.
But Lakesha Harrison, president of the UC Service Workers union and a vocational nurse at UCLA, said she continues to be disappointed with how this money is distributed.
She said she believes the UC has the wrong priorities.
“Workers in the UC are 25 to 35 percent below market,” she said. “The six million (dollars) given to top executives could have gotten 10,000 people out of poverty.”
The release of the report is part of the University’s “commitment to transparency, public accountability, and to disclose compensation information annually,” according to the report. This is the second year the UC has published its entire payroll.
Compensation reforms were made after the San Francisco Chronicle revealed in 2005 that millions of dollars in extra compensation were given to high-paid employees, but never publicly disclosed.
Previous external and internal audits show that some payments in the category of above-base pay were not provided or publicly disclosed consistently with University policy, but according to the report, this problem has been remedied.
The report stresses that above-base pay is not inappropriate. The extra pay “should be viewed as an appropriate part of total compensation necessary to recruit, retain, and reward valuable employees in the competitive marketplace in which the UC operates,” the report stated.
California State Senator Leland Yee said he appreciates that the university feels it is important to release this data, but he said he believes the way in which some of the information was presented is misleading.
The report states that above-base pay paid to senior managers, including the UC president and chancellors, decreased by over one million dollars, and is less than one percent of the total amount given to employees.
But Yee said that the report should have also stated that the high executives still receive a much larger salary than faculty and other employees.
“It’s important that the UC give the general public objective, accurate information,” he said. “The report should make all the facts clear.”
There have been no major trend changes in above-base pay versus prior years, according to the report.
The amount of above-base pay grew due to an increase of 2.7 percent in the UC employee workforce.
According to the report, this increase was needed because student enrollment grew more than 2.5 percent, research expenditures grew 3.1 percent, and inpatient days, the number of days of care, at UC medical centers grew 2.8 percent.
More than 75 percent of above-base pay went to professors, other teaching faculty, and people with research titles, the report states.
Almost 50 percent of the funding for the extra compensation, according to the report, came from professional fees, clinical revenue, and actions associated with UC teaching hospitals.