OAKLAND — The University of California announced today (Oct. 4) that it has reached a tentative three-year agreement on wages, health benefits and other important issues with the American Federation of Teachers union for the university's more than 3,000 lecturers.
"Lecturers provide key instructional services at our campuses," said Dwaine Duckett, UC vice president of human resources. "We're pleased that we've reached a balanced agreement that rewards the lecturers for their hard work while taking into consideration the major funding constraints that the university is experiencing."
Highlights of the tentative agreement include:
- Participation in the one-time merit-based salary increase program for 2011-12 for non-represented faculty and staff that is based on individual performance. Merit increases for the lecturers would be effective as of Oct. 1, 2011.
- Participation in the regular academic merit program for 2012-13 and 2013-14, for which lecturers as academic employees would be eligible as are all non-represented, non-student academic employees.
- The university and the union would reopen negotiations on salary in 2012-13 and 2013-14.
- Lecturers would pay the same rates for healthcare benefits as tenured faculty and non-represented employees. UC will continue to pay the bulk of health insurance premium costs, or about 87 percent of costs on average.
- Lecturers would contribute to the UC Retirement Plan at the same rate as non-represented employees. Contributions would be 5 percent of pay starting July 1, 2012. UC has committed to contributing 10 percent beginning July 1, 2012.
- The university and the union would negotiate any new contributions and post-employment benefit changes to the UC Retirement Plan for 2013-14.
Negotiations on the tentative agreement began in February. The university expects to receive the results of the union's ratification vote by mid-October.
If ratified by the union, the agreement would run through Sept. 30, 2014.