December 14, 2021
Dear Cindy and Lori,
We write to you with concerns related to UCSC’s implementation of UC President Drake’s announced 2021-22 range adjustment of 3% to the Senate faculty salary scales. SCFA’s members have brought a query to SCFA regarding your apparent decision not to apply the 3% increase to the combined base and off-scale salaries (i.e., to full salaries) nor to above scale salaries, as several other campuses have chosen to do. Our research indicates that chancellors and executive vice chancellors at Berkeley, Irvine, Los Angeles, and San Diego—campuses which, like UCSC, are in locations with high costs of living, due in particular to exorbitant housing costs—chose to apply the 3% increase on faculty members’ full salaries. Additionally, Davis has chosen to increase above scale salaries by 2.5%.
Our members have several interrelated concerns about UCSC’s decision to exclude off-scale and thereby not augment the basic range adjustment: (1) systemwide salary equity; (2) increased workloads necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic; (3) UC’s decision not to grant a cost of living increase in 2020; (4) Santa Cruz’s notoriously high cost of living (even within California); and (5) recent figures that show the consumer price index rising 6.8% for the 12 months ending in November, marking a 39-year high. SCFA is sympathetic to these concerns, addressed in more detail below.
(1) Systemwide salary equity: We believe President Drake is likely to extend former President Napolitano’s commitment to closing the salary gap between UC and its comparator 8 through regular increases to the salary scales. If UCSC continues to do nothing beyond implementing the systemwide salary scale augmentations, UCSC will fall even further behind the top half of the system as disparities in salary across the UC campuses continue to grow. When range adjustments are not accompanied by full salary adjustments locally and the top UC campuses continue to augment the range adjustments by increasing full and above scale salaries, the inequities among the campuses are further exacerbated. The UCSC campus special salary practice is not a solution to this problem because it pertains to individual faculty members and is embedded in the personnel process; as such, it does not address the systematic nature of the problem.
(2) Increased workloads necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic: As the campus’ messaging has repeatedly noted, faculty (like all workers on campus) have gone above and beyond during the 20 months of the pandemic: we quickly moved our courses onto Zoom, learned new technologies, and invented new pedagogical approaches in order to continue effective teaching; we have responded to ever more emails and held more office hours in order to stay in touch with students and address their mounting needs; and we have engaged in an increasing number of formal meetings to run university business as the ease of problem-solving through informal meetings disappeared. Our list here is incomplete and does not address the even greater increased workloads experienced by faculty who are also parents and other types of caregivers. Our point is to convey to you what we are hearing from our members: faculty morale has suffered as our workload has ballooned. President Drake’s letter says the 3% increase is “to recognize the extraordinary efforts by all of our policy-covered employees during the pandemic,” but UCOP had issued similar cost-of-living increases in recent years prior to the pandemic, so for many, this increase—which comes to even less than 3% due to how it has been applied locally—does not register as recognition of the extraordinary increase to workload, especially in light of rising inflation.
(3) Lack of cost-of-living adjustment in 2020: Indeed, like other UC workers, UC faculty did not receive a cost-of-living adjustment in 2020, despite the fact that working remotely from home, beginning in Spring 2020 and going forward, often has entailed increased utilities and internet costs, not to mention the increased workload that accompanied transitioning to remote teaching and revising courses and mentoring activities accordingly.
(4) Santa Cruz’s high cost of living: As we all know, the increases to our cost of living in Santa Cruz are being driven by the housing crisis. Just since the start of the pandemic, rents in Santa Cruz have increased 25-30%, and purchased housing prices have exploded 38%. We are now the least affordable market in the Bay Area (and the whole state), with only 15% of Santa Cruz residents able to afford a median-priced home (now over $1.25 million).
(5) Inflation relative to range adjustment: Even a 3% increase to overall salaries and to above scale salaries lags behind the 6.8% rate of inflation; by failing to augment off scale and above scale salaries, UCSC pushes its faculty salaries further behind the top half of our UC colleagues and further behind the basic rate of inflation.
SCFA urges you to apply the 3% increase to all faculty members’ full salaries (i.e., step and off scale combined and above scale). We look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Deborah Gould and Steve McKay
SCFA Co-Chairs
Cc: Professor David Brundage, Chair, UCSC Academic Senate
Professor Nico Orlandi, Chair, Committee on Faculty Welfare
Professor Stefano Profumo, Chair, Committee on Academic Personnel
SCFA Executive Board