And now a word from yours truly...

Power, Politics and Management: Lessons from the L.A. Experiences

Join us on Wednesday, Feb. 19 for dinner and an informative and intimate UCLA Conversation with William Ouchi, who is Sanford and Betty Sigoloff Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management; author of the 2003 book, “Making Schools Work: A Revolutionary Plan to Get Your Children the Education They Need" and chief of staff to former Mayor of Los Angeles, Richard Riordan.

This conversation will be led by Daniel J.B. Mitchell, Professor Emeritus at UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management and UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, who has served on the Emeriti Association’s Board of Directors for more than a decade. Our reception starts at 4:45 p.m., dinner starts at 6 p.m., followed by the program. The evening will conclude by 8:30 p.m. 

·     Wednesday, February 19, 2025

·     4:45 p.m.

·     UCLA Faculty Club

Open to all UCLA emeriti and retirees. Buffet dinner: $57 followed by the conversation described above.

Register by Feb. 12 at: 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ucla-emeriti-association-winter-2025-dinner-tickets-1114235200479

Two Announcements

In light of the devastating fires affecting Los Angeles and the Bruin community, we are extending the submission deadline for UCLA’s 2024-2025 Dickson Emeritus Professorship Award and the Carole E. Goldberg Emeriti Service Award. The new deadline is Monday, February 24, 2024.

As a reminder, an explanation of nominating procedures for both awards is provided below.

The Dickson Emeritus Professorship Award

The Dickson Award was created by a gift endowment from the late Edward A. Dickson, a Regent of the University of California from 1913 to 1946. The award honors outstanding research, scholarly work, teaching and/or educational service (e.g. service in professional, University, Academic Senate, emeriti, departmental or editorial posts or committees) performed by an emeritus/emerita professor since retirement. Each of the UC campuses has received funds that will support one or more awards each year.

The Carole E. Goldberg Emeriti Service Award

The Goldberg Award was created in 2014 to recognize extraordinary service by an emeritus/emerita professor to the academic enterprise after retirement. The award honors outstanding service in professional, University, Academic Senate, emeriti, departmental or editorial posts or committees performed at UCLA by an emeritus/emerita professor since retirement.

Nominating Procedures for Both Awards

Departments are limited to one nomination each year for each award. Department chairs or their designees are asked to submit nominations. Individuals also may nominate colleagues for these awards, but must coordinate with the department chair to submit nominations.

For both awards, nominations must include a cover letter, a copy of the nominee’s curriculum vitae and two supporting letters from leaders in the field commenting specifically on the nominee’s achievements since retirement.

• Dickson Award — nominators should concentrate on and highlight the nominee’s distinctive research, scholarly work and/or educational service since retirement.

• Goldberg Award — nominators should concentrate on and highlight the nominee’s distinguished service to UCLA since retirement.

NEW DEADLINE: Nominations are due by Monday, February 24, 2025. Please submit your nominations online via the Emeriti Awards Nomination Portal.

The awardee(s) will be announced on or before Monday, April 21, 2025. The awards, consisting of cash prizes and certificates, will be presented in the spring by the UCLA Emeriti Association.

If you have any questions regarding eligibility or the nomination procedure, please contact Emeriti Association President, Professor Emeritus Fernando Torres-Gil, Torres@luskin.ucla.edu.

Sincerely,

Michael S. Levine

Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs & Personnel

Chair, UCLA Emeriti Association Award Selection Committee

Emeriti Awards Presented Last Night

Bryson, Goldberg, Morris

The 2022-23 Goldberg award for extraordinary service by an emeritus/emerita professor was awarded to Robert Morris (Dept. of Pediatrics) last night at the Faculty Club. At the same ceremony, The 2022-23 Dickson awards for outstanding research, scholarly work, teaching and/or educational service were awarded to Yvonne Bryson (Dept. of Pediatrics) and Carole Goldberg (Law). [An award also went to Sander Goldberg (Classics) who could not be present.]

You can hear an audio recording of the ceremony emceed by Scott Waugh, president of the Emeriti Association, at:

https://archive.org/details/awards-5-31-23-sound-edited. (Yours truly did his best with an online equalizer to reduce background noise.)

Requa case settlement - Part 3

Plaintiff Joe Requa

Blog readers will recall the Requa lawsuit by retirees from Lawrence Livermore National Lab over entitlement to UC retiree health care benefits.* When Lab management was moved to a consortium including UC, the health benefits package was changed for LLNL employees. Retirees sued claiming a vested right to the UC package. Potentially, the suit might have tested the proposition that - contrary to UC's stance that retiree health benefits are a kind of voluntary gift and not a vested right - retiree health care is an obligation of UC. However, a settlement was reached that largely involved cash payments from UC. In that way, the LLNL got something and UC didn't risk testing its stance in court.

The final outcome is now playing out as the article below indicates. Note, however, the last sentence reproduced below which suggests some type of entitlement:

An official notice has been mailed to thousands of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory retirees affected by the recent University of California health care settlement agreement, including a detailed questionnaire that must be answered to ensure future benefits. The settlement was announced last month, resolving a nine-year class action lawsuit in which the retirees sought reinstatement in UC health care benefits programs that they enjoyed prior to a 2007 management contract change.

The lawsuit class, including heirs and estates of deceased retirees, includes about 9,000 members. Although they did not achieve reinstatement, they won two other key benefits. One provides $84.5 million in total financial assistance for specified past losses and expected future costs.

The other offers a guarantee of future reinstatement in UC’s health care benefits programs should the current Laboratory manager terminate its benefits program or materially change it...

Full story at https://www.independentnews.com/news/retirees-to-get-mailings-from-lawsuit-settlement/article_7a5ec738-3da3-11ea-8883-67da7b850971.html

Here is a notice from the Lawrence Livermore Retirees Assn.:

[Click on image to enlarge and clarify.]

Screenshot from https://www.livermorelabretirees.org/cucra-news as of 1/26/20

----
*A recent post is at https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2019/12/requa-case-settlement-part-2.html. That post will provide a link to prior posts. (Each post refers to the previous one.)

Not in a panic

Above and below: March 2019 PPIC poll, p. 9

Yours truly is always a bit skeptical about poll results regarding detailed state budgetary matters, since most folks don't focus on such issues. However, there has been so much drum beating on the issue of unfunded pension liabilities that the results above from the monthly PPIC (Public Policy Institute of California) poll are of interest. About a third of likely voters think pensions/retirement systems are a big problem, a third think they are somewhat of a problem, and a third think they are not a problem or admit to not knowing. (A special salute should be offered to the honest 10% who admit to not knowing.) Voters are roughly split concerning whether money should be allocated to paying down unfunded liabilities. (No respondents were asked if they knew what unfunded liabilities were.) Anyway, these results might be kept in mind by the Regents the next time the UC retirement system is discussed.

The full poll is available at:
https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/ppic-statewide-survey-californians-and-their-government-march-2019.pdf

Listen to Regents Discuss Retiree Health on Nov. 14, 2013

We'll post the audio for the entire Nov. 14 Regents meeting subsequently.  However, below is a link just to a discussion of the issue of retiree health.  As blog readers will likely know, as part of the open enrollment, UC retirees who are out of state are being dropped from UC programs and given a flat dollar contribution to buy their own policies from local exchanges.  An external contractor - Extend Health - has been engaged to provide counseling for out-of-state retirees.

According to the back and forth between regents and UC administrators, this change will drop the liability to the retiree health program by $700 million.  It was also pointed out that because the UC liability is limited to the flat dollar amount, the risk of health care costs has been transferred to the out-of-state retirees.  In the course of the discussion, it appears that consideration is being given to apply the out-of-state approach at some point in the future to in-state retirees as well.

You can find a link to the discussion below:  [Audio only with still picture.]

Post by CalPolicy.

Food for Thought on Retirement at UC

Inside Higher Ed today unveiled a survey of human resource executives in higher education.  The full survey can be downloaded from that source and the link is at the bottom of this post.  But start with the observation that much of higher ed operates with defined contribution pension plans such as TIAA-CREF.  Thus, there is no particular incentive for older faculty to retire built into the pension.

As can be seen below, higher ed HR execs thus worry that older faculty are not retiring, making it difficult to recruit new faculty.  UC, with its defined benefit system, does have a built-in retirement incentive.  And stock market gyrations – although they affect the funding of the plan – do not affect the basic retirement incentives as seen by participants.

The survey also shows that worries about retiree health care can adversely affect retirement incentives.  In most cases (including UC), retiree health benefits are not guaranteed in the same way that (defined benefit) pensions are guaranteed.  That’s something to think about as such benefits are manipulated for immediate budgetary reasons or even long-term cost reasons.  The basic lesson is that benefit plans are more than costs; they affect behavior.  A focus only on costs can obscure potential perverse employee incentives that changing benefits can bring about - such as excessively delaying retirement.  It's the kind of lesson everyone knows but, paradoxically, is often ignored or forgotten in practice.

A chart from the survey can be seen below.  Click on it for a clearer image.

The article with a link to the detailed survey is at:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/survey/human_resources_2012

Post-Employment Benefits session audios

The UC Post-Employment Benefits Taskforce was hosted by the UCLA Academic Senate on 5-4-10. Below are links to audios (videos with a still picture) of that session.

The audios are in 10 parts. Parts 1-8 run about 14 minutes each. Parts 9 and 10 run about 8 minutes each. You can access these audios at the following addresses:

PEB audios 5-4-10

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10 (end)