By Kevin Roddy, UC Davis Lecturer and UC-AFT Vice-President for Legislation

The UC-AFT continued to work on a number of fronts in order to improve working conditions for all employees at the University of California; such efforts included contacts with legislators, drafting specific bills, and joining forces with other unions in promoting common interests. In this we have been helped by the California Federation of Teachers lobbying staff in Sacramento: Judy Michaels, Mike Weimer, and Dolores Sanchez. We have also received counsel and aid from CFT Political Director Kenneth Burt.

Foremost among our initiatives is the issue of pension protection for UC employees with less than half-time employment; as reported in the previous Perspective, over 27,000 UC faculty and staff (among them over 1,300 lecturers) are denied access to Social Security. This means, simply, that instead of a 12.4% contribution shared half and half between the University and the employee, 7.5% is deducted from that employee’s salary and placed in a “safe harbor” fund. There are other penalties as well, which are detailed at http://cft.org/councils/uc/index.html, under the “News” article, “The Great UC Social Security Scam.” By Robert Weil.

On December 4, accompanied by CFT’s officers, I met with State Senator Alan Lowenthal (D, Long Beach) to discuss the viability of a bill to correct this injustice; since then we have met with staff on the Senate Higher Education Committee, staff in Senate President Pro Tem Don Parata’s office, and David Felderstein, Principal Consultant, California Senate Retirement Committee. As a necessary initial phase, we were advised to submit questions to Legislative Counsel concerning the standing of current practice. Ms. Michaels accordingly framed questions regarding Education Code Sections 92613 and 92614, and replies are forthcoming.

Thanks, then, to the efforts of many, we how have a bill, AB 1649, sponsored by Assemblyman Richard Alarcon (D, Van Nuys) and Assemblywoman Nell Soto (D, Pomona). The substantive portion of the bill reads as follows:

92613. (a) The Legislature finds and declares that nearly 30,000 employees of the University of California lack basic pension benefits consistent with benefits enjoyed by university employees under the University of California Retirement Plan or the social security system.
(b) The Legislature hereby encourages and empowers the Regents of the University of California to take all necessary steps to implement a defined benefit plan for the employees described in this section, including, but not limited to, contributing to the defined benefit plan ____ percent of the wages payable to these employees, or, if these employees do not participate in Social Security, at least an amount that would normally be required to be paid for an employee to participate in Social Security.

The final bill language is still in the offing, and the exact percentage of the University’s contribution must necessarily at this point be left blank.

The long, tortuous road by which a bill becomes a law is by no means completed, and in the meantime the UC-AFT is attempting to convince the University to voluntarily do the right thing, but failing that, legislation may be the only remedy. In this effort, we were helped tremendously by the investigations and research of Robert Weil, UC-AFT staff, and Howard Ryan, former Field Representative for UCI and UCLA.

Another blatant injustice practiced by the University administration is its pernicious habit of reducing legislatively-mandated cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) before passing them on to our members. In the most recent case, a 10% adjustment over three years was lowered to 6%, in the name of funding merits (which were formerly funded otherwise). We are now investigating the possibility of legislation to prevent this, but there may be statuary law already in place that forbids such practice.

On another front, Senator Leland Yee (d, San Francisco/San Mateo) will re-introduce his bill (formerly AB 775) aimed at opening Regents’ subcommittee meetings concerning executive salaries; it has been in such secret subcommittees that outrageous payments for administrators have been approved, the Regents taking advantage of a loophole that exempts such meetings from public scrutiny. Last year the bill easy passed the Assembly, but was held from Senate approval by Senate Pro Tem Perata. We participated in a UC-union coalition-wide campaign to persuade the Senator, but failed. This year, we will be exerting more pressure much earlier.

Finally, on February 14th, representing UC-AFT, I in conjunction with union representatives from the Community Colleges (CFT) [Mary Bergen, Ken Burt] and State Universities (CFA) met with Lt. Governor John Garamendi, Senator Jack Scott (Chair, Senate Higher Education Committee) and Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (Chair, Assembly Education Committee) to discuss the Lt. Governor’s educational agenda. The Lt. Governor is a voting ex-officio member of the Board of Regents, and he plans to participate fully in its deliberations. So watch this space for new proposals to come.