The UCSF Faculty Association sent a request to reconsider the decision, to differentiate between faculty with and without clinical responsibilities, in the amount of salary which counts towards pension estimates.
July 26, 2018
Dr. Elena Fuentes-Afflick
Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, School of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco
Ms. Maye Chrisman
Vice-Dean for Administration and Finance
University of California, San Francisco
Dear Dr. Fuentes-Afflick and Ms. Chrisman,
We write on behalf of the UCSF Faculty Association, an independent body which advocates for faculty welfare, in order to request reconsideration of the decision to permit departments to differentiate between faculty with clinical training and researchers in salary scale and, hence, in terms of earned pension benefits. This reconsideration should occur immediately rather than be deferred so that faculty with just a few years left in their careers are not penalized by the decision and will be able to receive the full benefit of a higher pension scale.
There are three germane issues.
The first is equity. While we all recognize that clinicians earn more than researchers, UCSF has been built on treating everyone as equal colleagues. This new policy breaches that principle.
Second, the proposed two-tier system will have the effect of having researchers effectively subsidizing the retirements of more highly compensated clinical faculty. Both those with and without clinical training have been at the same retirement scale, so they both have contributed exactly the same amount on their covered compensation up to the point at which the proposed change is made. Because retirement benefits are based on the highest (generally last) three years’ covered compensation, after three years at the new scale (and with slightly higher contributions), the faculty members with clinical responsibilities will have pension benefits that are over 7% higher but will have contributed much less than that in extra contributions to the system compared to their researcher colleagues.
Third, we question whether there is a fiscal need to create this two-tiered system. The stated rationale for the difference in salary scales was that PhD faculty presented greater financial risk to departments because clinical faculty can cover funding shortfalls through clinical work while PhD faculty cannot do so. No data have been provided to demonstrate that this theoretical risk is substantial enough to warrant creating a two-tier system. The information on the extent of the additional risk, if any, should be made available so that the rationalization for this differential change can be transparent. It is likely that such risk is very small given that funding shortfalls are generally for a only portion of salary for a finite period and not a faculty member’s entire salary and would only apply to some faculty for some of the time. Furthermore, the risk is made smaller by another recent change in faculty conditions of employment. Whereas faculty in compensation plans previously had to work full-time, faculty members may now reduce effort below 100 percent if desired. That being the case, faculty members can mitigate the risk to departments, if necessary, through reduction in time. In addition, most faculty without clinical training have had to be highly successful in extra-mural funding to get to the current stage of their careers and have often generated considerable indirect costs for the university along the way precisely because they could not rely on clinical revenue to supplement extra-mural grant funding as a pay source. Track records of historical funding levels between faculty with and without clinical responsibilities should play a role in the decision to differentiate the scale levels of compensation subject to pension accrual.
We also want to make it clear that we are not arguing against raising the covered compensation from 1.3 to 1.4 for clinical faculty. We are arguing that this change should be made for all faculty just as it has been historically.
The UCSF Faculty Association respectfully requests immediate reconsideration of the differentiation between faculty with and without clinical responsibilities to maintain UCSF’s history of equity in faculty pay and to provide all faculty with compensation that is competitive with comparator Schools of Medicine around the country.
Sincerely,
The Board of the UCSF Faculty Association
Member, Council of UC Faculty Associations