UC Offers Early Retirement as It Braces for Huge Cuts

Anticipating deep cuts in state funding, the UC Board of Regents on Friday authorized incentives for early retirement of senior faculty and staff and asked all other employees to voluntarily cut back their working hours and salary as much as 25%.

William B. Baker, UC vice president for budget and university relations, said the staff-trimming moves are needed even though Gov. Pete Wilson and legislators are debating how to slash spending, including funding for the university system.

“These voluntary actions will offset but a fraction of the anticipated cut,” Baker said at a regents meeting in San Francisco.

As a result of a similar early retirement plan last year, 2,909 staff members and 628 professors--about 8.5% of the system’s 7,400 tenure or tenure-track faculty--left the nine-campus system. UC spokesman Mike Alva said that saved about $75 million.

For the 1992-93 school year, 2,000 faculty in December and 6,000 non-teaching staff in November would be eligible for the early retirement program, Alva said. UC officials are unsure how many will take the offer, which gives five extra years of service credit toward pensions to veteran employees who are at least 50.

“It’s hard to predict,” Alva said, noting that a third of eligible faculty and more than half of eligible staff members took the offer last year. Eligible employees also would receive three months’ salary for their transition to retirement.

The program is designed to get the highest-paid employees off the payroll while avoiding layoffs of younger and lower-paid teachers and staff. The downside, critics say, is that UC could lose some of its most experienced and well-regarded scholars. There is also some skepticism within UC about how much money the programs save.

California State University, also facing huge budget cuts, has asked the Legislature to approve a similar plan. UC regents do not need legislative approval for their actions.

In addition, the regents unanimously voted for a plan that asks professors and staff to cut their work hours and pay from 10% to 25% for 12 or 18 months. Those who volunteer for cutbacks will receive two to four extra days of paid vacation. Officials said they do not know how many employees will opt for that program.

In other action, the regents appointed L. Dennis Smith, executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at UC Irvine since 1990, acting chancellor of the campus. Smith takes the post Oct. 1, when Chancellor Jack W. Peltason leaves to become UC system president.

Smith, a cell biologist, came to the Irvine campus in 1988 after 18 years on the faculty of Purdue University in Indiana. He said he expects to be among the candidates to be considered when a permanent chancellor is chosen.

Times staff writer Kristina Lindgren contributed to this story.