Pay Cuts?

Will UCOP follow the state into using pay cuts or furloughs (which in dollar terms come to the same thing)? As the news item below indicates, what the state may do will depend on negotiations between the Democratic legislative leaders and the governor. In past budget crises, there have been cuts in take-home pay at UC - including faculty - through one means or another.

The State Worker Blog of Sacramento Bee:

Make a deal on pay cuts or wait? California unions face a choice as budget deadline nears

Wes Venteicher, 6-7-20

With a week left to reach a budget deal, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic leaders in the Legislature stand on opposite sides of a $3.6 billion proposal to trim public employees’ wages.

Newsom plans to save the money by cutting state workers’ pay 10 percent and canceling raises scheduled for the next year. The Legislature isn’t counting on any wage savings in its plans to address a projected $54.3 billion deficit.*
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*Blog readers will know that yours truly has long lamented misuse in California budget-speak of words such as "deficit." Because the governor used the term, it gets picked up in news reports or gets repeated in terminology that is not found in accounting textbooks such as "shortfall" or "problem." Sloppy terminology can lead to sloppy thinking.
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Caught in the middle are the workers. Their July pay could grow or shrink depending on what happens between lawmakers, the governor and their unions in the days remaining before a June 15 budget deadline. 

Also in play is the state’s financial resiliency as it enters what is likely to be a prolonged period of uncertainty. Raises for workers would represent permanent new spending when lawmakers could soon be forced to find more ways to reduce expenses.

Newsom’s proposal, announced May 14, wasn’t pleasant for the state’s unions, but the table was set. His administration would attempt to bargain cuts with the unions, but if that failed, the Legislature would cut state worker pay unilaterally, likely by forcing workers to take two unpaid days off per month.

Senate leaders flipped the plan May 28, rejecting Newsom’s mandatory reductions. Assembly leaders followed suit last week. Legislators want the administration to keep negotiating with the unions over cuts, but their plan wouldn’t force any reductions and doesn’t presume any savings.

“What they’ve done has dramatically reduced (Newsom’s) leverage in negotiating with the unions,” said Michael Shires, an associate professor of public policy at the Pepperdine School of Public Policy.

TWO PATHS

One of the proposals, or a combination of the two, is going to be included in the final budget.

The uncertainty leaves unions to weigh two different paths in negotiations scheduled for this week.

They can negotiate agreements that are better than Newsom’s two unpaid days off but would still involve some pain. Or they can wait and see what happens and risk getting stuck with the two days.

Yvonne Walker, president of SEIU Local 1000, has said the state’s largest union is continuing negotiations.

“As a union, our job is not to merely respond to the crisis in front of us,” Walker said in an emailed statement. “Our job is to act. Our job is to lead. We cannot sit back, wait, and hope for a positive outcome.”

Walker said the union, which represents about 100,000 public employees, made a counter-proposal of one day of unpaid leave combined with other changes. The proposal would suspend the contributions Local 1000 workers make to a retirement health care trust fund, which will reach 3.5 percent of their pay this year.

Source: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article243323331.html