You can go to our
Newsletters.
Or search for a word here:
This Year at UC
It´s been a complicated and eventful year for UC. In May, Dee Kotla
won her case (wrongful termination at Lawrence Livermore National Lab)
with the help of Gary Gwilliam and his staff. (Gwilliam and his firm also
represented Mary Singleton and her colleagues in their case, alleging gender
inequity in pay at llnl, which settled in 2003.) Plaintiffs in Ling v. Regents,
a class action suit alleging pay inequity for Asians and Pacific Islanders
at llnl, were offered a less than satisfactory settlement (see
www.spse.org/Sentinel_May 2005_Final.pdf
and
www.geocities.com/apausa).
A case at Los Alamos National Lab continues.
Finally, the U.S. Department of Energy, which had paid the legal costs for UC labs, has put limits on reimbursement.
On the UC academic front, a tenure denial case involving pregnancy
leave has settled after two years. The plaintiff, received tenure at UCSB. Part of the speed with which this case was resolved may be due to the fact that it concerned lack of enforcement of policies that have been on the books at UC since 1988.
In November, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a series of articles on UC compensation for administrators, football coaches, lab researchers, and some professors. Readers were startled by some of the large salaries and extra perks received. UC representatives have argued that the university needs to pay the market rate in order to attract the best and the brightest.
Recent cases at the UC Labs raise questions about how well UC administrators do their jobs. If administrators perform inadequately, should hiring criteria be changed and "better," possibly more expensive, administrators be hired Or should current administrators be retrained?
UC´s own studies (see Parental Leave in Academe and the UCSF Climate Report of January 2002) raise questions about whether UC is doing its utmost to attract and retain the best and the brightest faculty members. High salaries may not suffice if colleagues are hostile and policies are not enforced. After several years in a chilly climate, even superstars may lessen in productivity and lose their shine.
Moreover, a focus on academic superstars may be misguided. And "My analysis suggests that when the academy believes that there are only a few stars, a few discoveries, and a zero sum game in wisdom and mastery of knowledge, the greatest damage is done to research itself," says Mary Burgan, former general secretary of the American Association of University Professors. (For her analysis, see http://repositories.cdlib.org/cshe/CSHE-10-05.)
A focus on high salaries for individuals may also be misguided. Colleagues are part of a faculty member´s environment. Is it really true that academics are only attracted by large amounts of money rather than intellectually stimulating colleagues?
Support staff is also a part of a faculty member´s environment. The Fall 2003 Newsletter described the downsizing of the UC support staff that has occurred over the years. Some staff members recently received 3.5 percent pay raises. This, although a step in the right direction, does not replace gaps in staffing left by downsizing. Moreover, pay raises only occurred for those staff members who are not represented by unions. Union workers testified in October that they can barely make ends meet (see www.cueunion.org). Last year´s report Berkeley´s Betrayal: Wages and Working Conditions at Cal described in detail the very difficult lives of food service workers, custodial workers, lab technicians, administrative assistants, parking lot attendants, and others at UCB. Because of low pay, these workers commute long distances to save on rent, crowd into inadequate housing, and take second jobs. Inadequate pay is not their only problem. The report notes, "We also found a managerial environment that is in many ways hostile to employees, indifferent to their health and safety, punitive to those who are injured on the job, and sometimes overtly abusive in manner."
The tentative union agreements with UC that have been reported are to be applauded, but more remains to be done. Both faculty administrators and staff managers appear to require a change in culture. This is more difficult to accomplish than a pay raise, but may be worth millions in the long run.
-wage@wage.org-