On Wednesday May 13, a letter signed by CUCFA and all UC unions and containing a series of principles that should guide our navigation of the impending financial crisis of the State and UC system was delivered to President Napolitano and the Regents. Soon after, President Napolitano and Regents’ Chair Pérez met with representatives of all UC Unions and CUCFA to discuss the situation. We’d like to share with you what we learnt from that meeting in this brief report:
The members of the UC union coalition met with President Janet Napolitano and Regents’ Chair John Pérez later Wednesday. Four FA representatives were on the call. The expectation had been that President Napolitano would present data showing UC in dire fiscal condition and then ask the unions to participate in a discussion about how to save on labor costs. As one labor leader said, to “help her hold the knife she cuts us with.”
Ahead of the meeting, the unions delivered a letter to President Napolitano, the Regents, the Chancellors, and the Medical Center CEOs. The letter pointed out many of the places UC has squirreled away resources that could be spent now, in this time of need. Spending down reserves would be healthier for UC and the state economy than layoffs or pay cuts. CUCFA signed on to the letter, and you can read it on our website at:
https://cucfa.org/2020/05/letter-to-president-and-regents/
The actual call did indeed include a report on UC’s dire fiscal condition, although it contained little new information that had not already been in the Regents’ agenda packet. (One new data point had to do with enrollment melt. As you know, UC accepts more students in the spring than they expect will enroll in the fall because some students change their minds over the summer. UC is concerned that the”summer melt” might be more severe this summer, given all the unknowns. This spring, UC sent acceptance notices to students with a target of 43,500 acceptances and had 42,500 takes. So they are about 1,000 below target, where last year take was 2,500 above target. Of particular concern was that the majority of those 1,000 that did not pick UC are from out of state – students that pay higher tuition that UC depends on.)
UC did contrast this crisis with the 2009 crisis by saying that in 2009 the cuts to UC all came in the state budget and totaled less than $1 billion. This time the cuts are coming to all forms of UC’s revenue: state funding, tuition, research funding, enterprise. And the cuts are probably going to be $2 billion this year and a further $4 billion next year. UC also did point out that 2/3 of costs were in pay and benefits. John Pérez hastened to add that although this problem is worse than the recession, UC has more access to borrowing and other tools to take on the task.
But then the call did not continue to a discussion of cuts that UC wanted the unions to agree to. The second half of the call that everyone was expecting didn’t happen.
But President Napolitano did mention near the end of the call that she was going to be announcing at the Regents’ meeting something about non-union staff and faculty. When asked to clarify what that meant, she said she would not.
There may be a hint in Governor Newsom’s announcement that he plans to
cut state employee pay by 10% (which would by default take the form of 2
days of furlough per month). Details at:
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article242717191.html
Also, Governor Newsom presented his May revision of the state
budget on Thursday, which included a significant cut to UC’s funding. The Governor’s proposal is online at:
and the UCLA Faculty Association blog has an analysis of it at:
http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2020/05/uc-general-fund-budget-sliced-by-eighth.html
and
http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-grim-may-revise.html