By Paul Brooks, Spectroscopist, Department of Integrative Biology, UPTE Bargaining Representative

Shared governance of the University of California Retirement Plan must be established before faculty and staff should be expected to re-start contributions. 11th November 2008.

From today's Daily Cal... a resolution has passed in the state legislature that urges the university to share oversight and decision making powers with employees over the UCRP. Full details of how the fund would be managed have not been worked out, but could be modeled after the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System. State Senator Leland Yee, D-San Francisco/San Mateo introduced this promising legislation.

Read the full story.

In our opinion, best practices must be followed before making the important decisions about restarting UCRP contributions. We believe that the Regents, as fiduciaries of the $42 billion UCRP, have not had the benefit of projections and analyses that would constitute best practices for making this type of decision.