Following the failure of his obscure proposal for “curtailment” – a euphemism for salary reduction – President Drake has announced every campus will have to go it alone in dealing with its own budget deficits. He urged campuses to follow three principles:
- Protecting jobs and avoiding pandemic-related layoffs as much as possible;
- Supporting the health and well-being of employees and their families, including their long-term financial security, particularly for those in lower-paid positions;
- If salary actions are taken, in the spirit of equity and fairness, higher-compensated employees should carry a larger burden to protect employees with lower earnings.
While these are excellent principles, we wonder whether the devolution of financial crisis management to individual campuses further weakens the UC system. However arrived at, the separatist strategy is certain to lead to intense bargaining over “rebenching,” generating deep jealousies among already unequally endowed campuses. At a time when we should be presenting a united front in Sacramento, we are being divided, told to fend for ourselves.
Here at Berkeley, we face a shortfall of $340m for fiscal year ending 2021. According to Chancellor Christ, this can be reduced to $65m through “short term borrowing, federal funding, and human resource actions,” which amounts to about 3% of the total wage and benefit bill. It is not unreasonable, therefore, as James Vernon wrote last week (TW3 #181) and President Drake is advising, to ask the rich and super-rich to shoulder a greater burden, up to 25% of their annual salaries. In that case, with any luck this will be a one-time reduction. But this comes at a time when so many of our campus employees are already suffering setbacks from COVID-19. We anxiously await Chancellor Christ’s promised announcement this week as to what measures she Berkeley will take to address our COVID deficit.