One of those stranger things about faculty pay - Part 3

 

We have been blogging of late about a push that seemed to come from systemwide somehow to get all faculty salaries back on the civil-service-like official scales that in fact don't apply to most faculty.* Because of various factors - mainly labor market competitive conditions and fiscal squeezes on the university - pay increasingly became off-scale with variations across disciplines. The various campus senates contributed comments on this push were compiled into an 111-page compendium with various viewpoints expressed.** (UCLA contributed only modestly to this compendium.) Apparently, the message that going back to civil service scales isn't going to work came through.

At least one UCLA department has received the following communication:

As a result of feedback in dialogue with deans, department chairs, academic senate and faculty across the campus, Vice Chancellor for Academic Personnel Michael Levine and his team have decided to delay the implementation of the phased program to change faculty off-scale salaries for at least one year and possibly longer. During this period, VC Levine will work with a new committee, the Off-Scale Salary Advisory Committee, as well as the appropriate committees of the Academic Senate to begin to redesign guidelines for determining off-scale components of faculty compensation. The Off-Scale Salary Advisory Committee will be composed of members from the Academic Senate, the College Divisions and the Professional Schools, with each unit nominating its members for participation. The intention of this change from the very beginning has been to enhance equity in faculty salaries. Moving forward, our focus will be on partnering with faculty and with the new committee to determine the best ways to implement these changes with our shared goal of advancing equity.

It would be nice to know where the push is coming from. It doesn't seem to be coming from the Regents - at least if their recent agendas are any guide. Jerry Brown when he was governor might have been the source, but he has been out of office for awhile. Newsom - once becoming governor - doesn't come to Regents meetings unlike Brown, and he has been preoccupied with other matters. (Newsom came to Regents meetings as lieutenant governor because lieutenant governors don't have a lot to do.) So who are the pushers? Will they be happy to let a committee go off and study the matter "for at least one year and possibly longer"?

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2021/01/one-of-those-stranger-things-about.html and http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2021/02/one-of-those-stranger-things-about.html.

**https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/reports/mg-mb-faculty-salary-scales-task-force-report.pdf.