UC regents approve furloughs, discuss possible January fee hike

The University of California's Board of Regents voted overwhelmingly today to push most professors and staff into furlough days that would reduce their pay between 4% and 10% for the year starting Sept. 1. The controversial furlough plan would affect about 140,000 part-time and full-time UC employees at its 10 campuses and many other satellite operations.

Meeting in San Francisco, the regents voted 20 tp 1 for the furloughs, which they said were needed as a way to avoid layoffs during the current state budget crisis. Only Lt. Gov. John Garamendi voted against the plan, calling the furloughs "just not acceptable." He said UC instead should be pushing more strongly for the state government to restore some of the revenues cut from higher education.

The number of unpaid furlough days will range between 11 and 26 a year, increasing on a sliding salary scale, with those earning lower salaries having fewer days of the unpaid leave. Student employees and people whose salaries come fully from outside grants are exempted.

Agreements from labor unions will be needed for the cuts to go into effect for many UC employees, and some labor leaders have said they will resist them. UC President Mark G. Yudof said today that negotiations will start soon. He warned that layoffs worth about $184 million in salaries, the amount the furloughs are expected to save, could be in the works if the unions all refuse to accept the plan.

In other bad financial news, Yudof said that UC students should brace themselves for another fee increase in the winter, on top of the 9.3% raise approved in May for the fall term. He said there was "a substantial likelihood" of a fee hike in January although he said he did not know yet how big it might be.

-- Larry Gordon in San Francisco

Comments

[Fred]

Just to note - not one of the research faculty will take a second off of research or teaching, they already work weekends, holidays, and nights. They are simply taking a pay cut to find you medications when you get old and stuff starts falling apart...

[Brian]

We are witnessing the death of the current incarnation of UC -- one that takes its place as the top public university in the world. It's gone. We should all mourn its demise. For decades, UC has been the engine that drives much of our state's economy. The real question is what will UC become. I don't think anyone knows the answer to that question.

[Jeff]

Private businesses have been furloughing staff and upper mangement for the past 6 months due to decrease in income. Why is it such big news that now goverment has to do the same thing. Government work is not an entitlement. Lets just do it and move on with getting the economy back.

[Winfield J. Abbe]

California is living beyond its means and has been for far too long. The University of California is no longer the "crown jewel" of higher education in the world it once was. It has been corrupted by government grants and money that reward orthodox research in often failed directions such as the failed genetics direction of cancer research for the past 40 odd years.
For example UC Riverside obtained approval for a new medical school last year a few months before the bottom fell out of the economy. Before that approval I wrote letters to then Acting Chancellor Robert D. Grey with a number of suggestions for this new and very expensive school. I addressed issues like the 50+ year old policy of providing medical doctors watered down introductory physics classes compared to other physics or science or engineering majors, or the scientific misconduct of medical researchers in their patent disregard for the experiments and facts about cancer causation by the genius in Germany Otto Warburg, M..D., Ph.D., who discovered that cancer is caused by oxygen deficiency of living cells over a long period of time or respiratory impairment or the wrong energy supply as first published in 1923 for animals and proved some 40 years later for humans. Not a single reply from the arrogant and likely ignorant Chancellor Grey, purported to be an "expert" in biochemistry. It is very likely professor Grey has never read a single one of Otto Warburg's 500+ scientific papers.. Multi billions of public and private dollars have been squandered on cancer "research", yet about one person every minute dies either from cancer, treatment or both, usually treatment.
UC is no longer the giant it once was with research giants like Dean Burk, Ph.D., who proved that Vitamin C at high doses kills cancer cells in 1969, or Hardin Jones, Ph.D. who proved that those who did not accept the orthodox failed treatment of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation for cancer lived up to four times longer than those who did receive such "treatment", or John Gofman, M.D., Ph.D. (the pupil of Glenn Seaborg, Ph.D.), who blew the whistle in 1969 on the government lies about safe levels of radiation, and lost most of his research funding for doing so. One could go on and on.
The first thing UC must do is revoke the approval of the new medical school for UC Riverside which should never have been approved in the first place. If California does not get its economic house in order, it could be the straw that broke America's back for good. Do not donate a single dime to these institutions of propaganda, indoctrination and lower learning.

Winfield J. Abbe
A.B., Physics, UC Berkeley, 1961
M.S., Physics, CSU Los Angeles, 1962
Ph.D., Physics, UC Riverside, 1966
Athens, GA, formerly from Sierra Madre, California

[Jack]

The notion of furloughs for faculty is absurd. No doubt they will have to take furlough days on days they are not teaching. What sort of lectures will be given if they are then taken on days used to prepare their lectures?

UC is rife with bloated bureaucracy, and senior people who do nothing constructive but cannot be fired. The UC Regents should implement changes to make the Universities more efficient, rather than making these absurd across-the-board cuts.

[Winfield J. Abbe]

California is living beyond its means and has been for far too long. The University of California is no longer the "crown jewel" of higher education in the world it once was. It has been corrupted by government grants and money that reward orthodox research in often failed directions such as the failed genetics direction of cancer research for the past 40 odd years.
For example UC Riverside obtained approval for a new medical school last year a few months before the bottom fell out of the economy. Before that approval I wrote letters to then Acting Chancellor Robert D. Grey with a number of suggestions for this new and very expensive school. I addressed issues like the 50+ year old policy of providing medical doctors watered down introductory physics classes compared to other physics or science or engineering majors, or the scientific misconduct of medical researchers in their patent disregard for the experiments and facts about cancer causation by the genius in Germany Otto Warburg, M..D., Ph.D., who discovered that cancer is caused by oxygen deficiency of living cells over a long period of time or respiratory impairment or the wrong energy supply as first published in 1923 for animals and proved some 40 years later for humans. Not a single reply from the arrogant and likely ignorant Chancellor Grey, purported to be an "expert" in biochemistry. It is very likely professor Grey has never read a single one of Otto Warburg's 500+ scientific papers.. Multi billions of public and private dollars have been squandered on cancer "research", yet about one person every minute dies either from cancer, treatment or both, usually treatment.
UC is no longer the giant it once was with research giants like Dean Burk, Ph.D., who proved that Vitamin C at high doses kills cancer cells in 1969, or Hardin Jones, Ph.D. who proved that those who did not accept the orthodox failed treatment of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation for cancer lived up to four times longer than those who did receive such "treatment", or John Gofman, M.D., Ph.D. (the pupil of Glenn Seaborg, Ph.D.), who blew the whistle in 1969 on the government lies about safe levels of radiation, and lost most of his research funding for doing so. One could go on and on.
The first thing UC must do is revoke the approval of the new medical school for UC Riverside which should never have been approved in the first place. If California does not get its economic house in order, it could be the straw that broke America's back for good. Do not donate a single dime to these institutions of propaganda, indoctrination and lower learning.

Winfield J. Abbe
A.B., Physics, UC Berkeley, 1961
M.S., Physics, CSU Los Angeles, 1962
Ph.D., Physics, UC Riverside, 1966
Athens, GA, formerly from Sierra Madre, California