With a diminished budget available for employee benefits, a task force has held forums at each UC campus to discuss solutions to potential faculty retention and recruitment problems that may result from benefit cuts.
The current retirement plan defines benefits and gives employees pensions based on their age, length of service and the average of their three highest-earning salaries. The plan is structured to reward people with long service and encourage staff to stay during their most productive years, ultimately allowing them to retire with dignity, said Shane White, chair of the university committee on faculty welfare.
The pension plan attracts good faculty and retains them. However, with the decrease in funding, it will become more difficult to attract valuable staff and faculty, White said.
Because of this lack in funding, the UC Post-Employment Benefits Task Force, organized by UC President Mark Yudof, is working toward a solution to maintain the quality of the UCs and prevent the system from going bankrupt. According to White, the amount owed to retirees is increasing, but UCs are unable to cover it since they are low on money.
Employees and employers typically make contributions from their salaries to maintain the retirement plan. However, no contributions have been made over the past 20 years. Therefore, UCs are unable to provide their faculty and staff with the same caliber of benefits.
As of April 2010, the task force is ending the 20-year contribution hiatus by implementing a four percent contribution from the UC and two percent from employee salaries into the pool of retirement funds. However, White said 17 percent is needed in order for the retirement plan to be able to maintain what it has promised to retirees.
“No one wanted to make contributions ““ UC administration, employees, the state. Everyone enjoyed the contribution holiday, but it went on too long and the state proved to be an unreliable partner,” said White, a professor at the School of Dentistry.
Students will be impacted if the quality of the faculty decreases because of the lack of benefits that are offered for both the faculty and the staff, White said.
“Once we restart the contributions, we are trying to manage it in a way that lessens the impact on students,” said Gary Schlimgen, director of pension and retirement programs, referring to the quality of academia at the university. “For faculty and staff, we are going to have to manage the costs and the benefits to be able to sustain it.”
Members from workers unions such as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents all 160,000 custodians UC-wide, showed concern at the forum.
“There are no workers on the task force; these are executives who sit higher up and make billions of dollars anyway and are making decisions for us,” said Teresa Avendano, union member and former UCLA staff member.
Avendano said the UCs need to hold a conference that represents everyone and allows for workers’ voices to be heard.
“The decisions will affect the size and shape of the University of California. I, personally, would prefer that the university gets smaller rather than worse,” White said.