Day 63

November already?

Next week will be the first forum on Berkeley's campus for the "listening tour" for the President's Commission on the Future of UC. The topic will be "Post-Employment Benefits." The task force has been charged with finding a sustainable way to go forward with retirement benefits, since they do not believe that the current model meets that requirement. According to a posting on the UC Berkeley News Center site, "The university is committed to offering competitive post-employment benefits to attract and retain faculty and staff, but fiscal pressures are making it increasingly harder to so." Unlike at many--maybe even most--other institutions, we haven't had to make contributions to our retirement plan in years. The fund for our retirement has been at or near 100% for quite a while because it was performing so well, so it was decided (forgive the passive voice, but the precise origins of decisions like this seem to vanish into the ether over the years) that the university and employees should stop contributing. This year, the fund lost a good deal of money, so we will all have to start putting money into the pot beginning in April (meaning everyone's take-home pay will decrease AGAIN). Now we are being invited to an event on a listening tour where we will hear a 30 minute talk, then have 90 minutes to ask the panel questions. The language of the invitation doesn't give the impression that there will be a whole lot of actual listening by the task force, but it is easy enough to make an opinion sound like a question, so I'm sure we'll hear plenty. I have been to many administrative meetings over the years, including union meetings, so I am curious about how useful and productive this meeting will be as opposed to--pardon my French--a bitch-fest by frustrated, angry, money-strapped staff who are sick of the university taking things away from them. Even if the meeting turns mildly hostile toward the administration, at least they will know how we are feeling, and how important things like a great retirement plan are to people with mediocre paychecks. Oh, and I don't want to forget to mention that the faculty will have their own separate meeting. While I understand the differences in the university system between the compensation of faculty and staff, and that both meetings will likely be more productive by separating the groups, I resent it just the same. Unionized members of the staff and those of us who are exempt, salaried staff members are compensated in very different ways from each other, too, so the split isn't entirely that simple and straight forward. Maybe separating the groups is part of a secret conspiracy to enhance divisions amongst the members of the masses so we won't organize and rebel. But I'm willing to bet that the conversation at the faculty meeting will be very similar to the one at the staff meeting, just with bigger words.