President Mark G. Yudof on Aug. 17 authorized a one-year, merit-based system of pay raises for faculty and nonrepresented staff members.

He called the raises for faculty a tool to recruit and, most importantly, retain leading academics who are increasingly being courted by competing institutions. The raises are in addition to the faculty's regular merit pay increases.

As for nonrepresented staff, “Fairness dictates that we take this step,” Yudof wrote, noting that many employees are working longer hours in this budget-troubled time and have not been given merit or cost-of-living raises in nearly four years, even while most union-represented employees have been receiving regular pay increases.

Yudof cited one more reason for the raises: health and pension coverage is taking more from employees' take-home pay.

Under the plan, eligible faculty at all levels will receive 3 percent raises effective Oct. 1, while eligible staff members will share in a 3 percent merit pool, with individual raises based on performance evaluations that are due for completion in the fall. The staff raises would be retroactive to July 1.

The Board of Regents included the pay raises in the 2011-12 budget, and Yudof, with a letter to the chancellors, set the plan into motion.

The UC Office of the President estimated the plan's cost at $164 million, about one-fifth of which will come from state general fund money; about one-fifth from other core funds, including student fees and campus general funds; and the rest from medical center revenue, and contract and grant funds. UC Davis has budgeted $8 million in state general fund money for the campus's pay raises.

After Yudof's letter came in, UC Davis Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter notified the Council of Deans and Vice Chancellors, while echoing the president’s appreciation to all UC employees for their contributions to the university and the people of California.

Meritorious service

Yudof emphasized that the raises are meant to reward meritorious service. The Office of the President added that no raises will be given to faculty members with negative performance evaluations.

In describing the faculty raises as a tool for recruitment and retention, Yudof declared: “University quality cannot be compromised, and our excellent professors and researchers are the fountainhead of that quality.”

The raises for nonrepresented staff demonstrate “that we understand and appreciate how hard they have worked, through difficult times," Yudof said.

Even with the 2011-12 merit increases, UC salaries for nonrepresented employees lag significantly in cost-of-living increases since 2007, according to the Office of the President. UCOP also noted this: Among nonrepresented staff members who are projected to be eligible for merit raises, more than half make less than $70,000 a year and more than two-thirds make less than $80,000.

Some nonrepresented staff will not be eligible for pay raises: employees who joined the university after Jan. 1, 2011, and those who received salary increases in connection with promotions since that same date.

Yudof also excluded nonrepresented staff members who earn more than $200,000 a year, and senior management, including the president and the chancellors — nearly 400 people in all, including nonrepresented staff.

Yudof acknowledged that many of UC’s senior leaders are compensated at below-market levels, and that senior leaders took more of a hit from the 2009-10 furloughs. “But I am confident that these senior employees … will understand that the fiscal pressures we are under make it imperative that we focus this merit pool on our faculty and those of our nonrepresented staff who are not at the high end of their compensation range,” Yudof wrote.

Read Yudof’s letter to the chancellors.