UCSF to Award Merit Increases to Faculty, Staff This Year

By Lisa Cisneros

UCSF will give performance-based merit increases to faculty at all levels and most non-represented staff who earn less than $200,000 a year.

Mark Yudof

Mark Yudof

The UC Board of Regents last November approved funds in UC’s 2011-2012 budget to provide a pool for merit-based salary increases for faculty and staff.

UC President Mark Yudof described the merit increases in a letter today to UC chancellors.

“Our purpose of this pool is to give you a tool in your efforts to recruit and, most importantly, retain leading faculty members, who increasingly are being courted by competing institutions,” Yudof wrote. “As I have said on many occasions, University quality cannot be compromised, and our excellent professors and researchers are the fountain head of that quality.”

“Another purpose is to demonstrate to non-represented staff members that we understand and appreciate how hard they have worked, through difficult times, on behalf of the University and California. Fairness dictates that we take this step.”

The merit program is aimed at helping campuses recruit and retain faculty and to acknowledge non-represented staff for their ongoing dedication and service despite not having received general pay increases for the past four years.

The merit pool this year will be calculated at 3 percent of the overall pay in the eligible personnel categories, and individual increases will be based on performance and determined by each campus.  

The UC Office of the President is currently drafting the specific guidelines for how the merits will be implemented and these guidelines will be sent to campus academic personnel and human resources offices in the coming days. Chancellors will have some discretion in terms of how the merit increases are applied at their institutions. UCSF employees can expect to receive additional details when they become available.

Employees who are not eligible for this year’s merit increases include:

  • Non-represented staff who earn more than $200,000 per year, were hired after Jan. 1, 2011 or who have had a promotional increase or other salary increase since then;
  • All members of the Senior Management Group, including all chancellors and UC President Yudof; and
  • Staff members who are represented by unions since they are subject to collective bargaining and have received regular pay increases in recent years.

At UCSF, 71 employees earn more than $200,000 per year, according to David Odato, assistant vice chancellor of Human Resources at UCSF.

The last time non-represented staff received merit increases was October 2007. Last year, UCSF’s non-represented staff who did not work at the medical center also experienced a range of salary reductions in the mandatory furlough program.

The merit increase for faculty will be effective on October 1 and for staff will be retroactive effective July 1. The timing for when UCSF employees would see these increases in their paychecks has yet to be determined and depends upon the performance evaluation process.