Between AIG, GM and UC, millions of taxpayers’ hard-earned money continues to be poured into top executive’s pockets. While CUE has been at the bargaining table with UC since March 2008, AIG, General Motors, Chrysler, Fannie and Freddie Mac, CitiBank, Bank of America and dozens more corporations have received unprecedented millions of our bailout funding. UC lays off CUE workers and is threatening more cutbacks and layoffs - they claim there’s no money to retain staff. But we know there is money and it’s clearly going somewhere.

In a San Francisco Chronicle article published March 25, 2009, we learned where some of it is going:

• Six senior managers have received raises of 22.3% over the last two months.
• Peter Taylor, hired as UC’s Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer has a base salary of $400,000 per year. He also gets a relocation allowance of $64,000, reimbursement of moving expenses up to $15,000 and an $8,916 a year auto allowance.
• Daniel Dooley, appointed as Senior Vice President for External Relations and also working as Vice President of Agricultural Resources and Natural Resources, got a $50,000 a year raise. He earns $370,000 per year. Of course, he has to do both jobs.
• John Falle was appointed as Associate VP of Federal Government Relations. He got a 10.4% raise, so he’s now earning $270,000.
• Henry Brady was appointed Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, with a 15% raise from his faculty salary. Now he earns $283,200.
• Dr. Michael Bishop, former Chancellor of UCSF, was given a paid administrative leave for one year at a salary of $402,200.
• Larry Vanderhoef, former Chancellor of UC Davis, was given a paid administrative leave for one year (a sabbatical) at a salary of $315,000. He was also given offices on campus, an executive assistant ($91,000) and an office budget of $39,000 for the 09-10 fiscal year.
• Paul Staton, Chief Financial Officer of the UCLA Hospital System, was awarded a “pre-emptive retention” pay raise of 22.3% to increase his annual base salary to $380,000.

Just these salary actions total $ 9,285,916.00.

Imagine what our raises will be if and when we ever get one. Our raises won’t bring us anywhere near these executive salaries. And we’re not “on sabbatical”. And we’re facing possible layoffs.

But it doesn’t stop here. On March 26th, the President of the UC Regents Richard Blum and the President of the UC System Mark Yudof (in a follow-up Chronicle article they wrote) actually defended and explained the reasons for these salaries. Blum, the multi-millionaire financial markets investor is wealthy beyond description. Yudof is paid around $870,000 per year. Here are some of their explanations:

• UC has instituted a system wide freeze on senior managers’ salaries. They’ve cut (doesn’t say eliminated) bonuses and incentive pay. They’ve reduced staff by 628 over the last two years.
• They’re curtailing faculty recruitment, “in many cases by 50% or more”. They’re reducing hiring of non-teaching staff (that’s us). They’re severely limiting spending on travel. They’re consolidating or eliminating programs (that would be the layoffs in UNEX and the elimination of the New Teacher Center, Arts and Lectures, the threat to Shakespeare Santa Cruz).

The rest of their article (you can read it at www.sfgate.com - click on the Education link) goes on to defend the high salaries of these executive managers: “Of the people mentioned in The Chronicle story, one employee has been asked to fill two vice presidential roles for the salary of one…” Don’t CUE workers do that all the time?

“Another has been hired to serve as chief financial officer, at a salary well below the going rate for CFO’s”. So it’s the old “market rate” argument. If we don’t pay these high salaries, we’ll lose these executives. It’s true for us too, but we don’t see them saying that and giving out us increases or promotions in the classification series.

On Sunday March 29th, President Obama asked for and received the resignation of Rick Wagoner, the President of General Motors, the executive who’s been heading the company for eight years, driving it right into financial disaster requiring our bailout.

The California Legislature could consider doing the same thing with Richard Blum. He allowed our pension fund to be mismanaged and authorized the hiring of Mark Yudof with a significant raise over the previous UC President.

UC Santa Cruz is located in the 27th Assembly District. Our Assemblymember is Bill Monning. You can send Assemblymember Monning your thoughts on this at 701 Ocean Street, Suite 318B, Santa Cruz, 95060, or call his office, at 831.425.1503 to share your thoughts. Or you can reply to this message with one of your own for Assemblymember Monning, and we’ll make sure it reaches him.

If we don’t defend ourselves, who will? We can’t rely on Blum and Yudof to tell the public the truth about UC costs and budget choices. We must speak for ourselves.