Day 31

My first furloughed paycheck. Not quite as big a hit as I expected (it isn't as much as I spend on groceries per month as I previously guesstimated), but not insignificant. It amounts to about what I spend on lunches during the workweek, and occasional Starbucks in the morning. So if I kick those two things out of my life, I should be back to happily living on the edge rather than with my head underwater. Phew! Although, I did go back through my bank statements, and I was taking home more last November than, say, this past March because of the increased parking fees. So my take-home income has been steadily declining in literal dollars since I started working here.

Chancellor Birgeneau dropped a bit of a bomb on us this morning. UC Berkeley has hired an outside consulting firm to spend the next six months with us assessing our efficiency and functionality to find places where we can save money to help deal with the permanent budget cuts we've had to make. For my friends who are fans of Office Space, they've called in the Bobs. The Chancellor mentions the importance of the involvement of faculty, staff, and students three times in the message, presumably to help allay fears that a tornado is going to come through and wipe out all of our jobs and completely change the way we do things. The project has been dubbed "Operational Excellence" or OE. I have nothing but snarky comments to add about all this, so I'll keep them to myself for now. I am curious and nervous about where this will lead us.

The one union represented staff member in my office is practically foaming at the mouth with fury over the behavior and actions of her union allegedly acting on her behalf and with her best interests in mind. Seems that the university is going to collect the amount of the furlough savings from union employees one way or another, so if they don't give it up in the monthly bite out of everyone's paycheck, they are going to lose it some other way.  One option on the table is a temporary two month layoff for everyone, which means all union employees will lose their 4-6% annual pay over a two month period instead of twelve, undoubtedly leaving some hungry bellies empty, and landlords unpaid. Another plan being bantered about involves something with her owing the university money. None of the non-furlough plans she's heard about will allow the accrual of vacation, sick, or retirement time. Those of us on the furlough are accruing all of those things at a regular full-time pace. The union has until October 15 to come to an agreement with the university. If they don't, the layoffs will be implemented. If that happens, she's threatened to storm out of the office holding a box filled with the plant from her desk, pictures of her kids, and that bag of peanuts she keeps stashed in her desk drawer. Well, she might have to do that even if she doesn't want to. Bad times, bad times.