I am deeply concerned by the recent announcement that all UC employees will have their salaries disclosed on a public website. As an employee, I do not feel comfortable having my salary made public nor do I want to see how much (or how little) my colleagues are earning. Having this information will only breed frustration and concerns about equity among the staff and will threaten employee morale. Please reconsider your current plan and respect our privacy.

Thank you for your note - I know this is on the minds of a lot of employees, and I am sensitive to the concerns that faculty and staff have about this. We are still working through the details of how this will work, and how we balance fulfilling our obligation to public accountability and transparency, with employees' sense of privacy. As I think your note makes clear, the real issue is equitable and competitive pay for everyone, and not publicizing what we pay people, and we need to and will continue to work hard to ensure adequate compensation for everyone. At the same time, because we are a public institution, salary information is a matter of public record and something UC is obligated to disclose -- it simply is one of the realities of being a public institution, and something that other public universities and institutions already do.

Something must be done about the rise in health care costs. After many years of small or no pay increases, the staff finally receives a reasonable increase, yet it is offset by the increase in health care and retirement benefits contributions. It is hard to make ends meet when costs keep rising at a faster rate than salary.

You're absolutely right. We need to do everything we can to preserve the progress we've made on salaries, and we continue to work hard to do just that. We are continuing our salary-based approach to health insurance, which means lower-paid employees pay lower monthly premiums, and the plan to restart pension plan contributions early allows for lower initial contributions. The longer we wait to restart contributions, the more underfunded the plan is expected to be which will mean higher contributions from both UC and employees. Some things, like the rising cost of health care nationally, are beyond our control, but you can be assured that we are doing everything we can to manage costs in order to maintain good employee benefits and help employees maximize their raises.