Wage Increases for Lower-Wage Employees

To: Campus Community

From: Acting Chancellor Blumenthal

Last month, I was delighted to report that the UC Office of the President (UCOP) and the Coalition of University Employees (CUE) had reached an agreement on UC's proposal to increase the wages of our lowest paid clerical employees - http://messages.ucsc.edu/text.asp?pid=1132

In that message, I also indicated that a similar announcement would be forthcoming concerning employees (both staff and academic) who are not represented by a union.

UCOP has now announced its systemwide plan for the lowest-paid (annual salary rates of less than $40,000) non-represented staff and academic employees. (Not included are student academic employees, interns and residents, non-students in student academic titles, and postdoctoral scholars.)

Effective April 1, 2007, eligible employees will receive the following:

-- 2 percent salary increase if their annual salary rate is less than $30,000.

-- 1 percent salary increase if their annual salary rate is at least $30,000 but less than $35,000.

-- 0.5 percent salary increase if their annual salary rate is at least $35,000 but less than $40,000.

At a campus level, in September 2006, I also set aside campus funds to raise the wages of ALL of our lowest paid staff employees. That means that all lowest paid (non-student) staff employees at UCSC will receive UCSC's salary increases in addition to those contained in the UCOP systemwide plan.

The UCSC campus increases, which are retroactive to October 1, 2006, will:

-- Raise the minimum full-time annual salary rate on the campus to $25,000.

-- Provide equity increases from 1 to 4 percent, depending on salary level, to individuals earning $25,000 and $35,000 a year.

We are very pleased to accomplish these important first steps.

More information regarding this program will be available from Staff Human Resources and Academic Human Resources in the near future.