Campus proposes
major changes to salary plans
Posted July 12, 2000
New guidelines now are available for administering salary increases provided by the recently adopted state budget.
The budget allows for employee salary increases, with additional funding especially for employees in lower-paid positions. These are not across-the-board increases; actual pay increases will vary depending on compensation programs and collective bargaining requirements.
The merit increase control figure is 3.5 percent.
An additional $19 million was added to the final budget for staff employees systemwide, with a priority on improving compensation for lower-paid employees.
Information sessions on the salary programs, including the merit-bonus program, will be scheduled in late summer or early fall after final decisions on all salary adjustments have been reached by Office of the President and through the collective bargaining process.
For exclusively represented staff, salary actions are subject to the terms of existing collective bargaining agreements or to meeting and conferring in accordance with provisions of the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act. Bargaining updates are posted on HRWEB at (http://hrweb.berkeley.edu/hrlabor.htm).
For employees in the Professional and Support Staff and the Manager and Senior Professional merit-based pay plans, merit increases (covering range adjustments, merit increases, and equity increases) will be effective October 1. Employees appointed to positions in these pay plans by July 1 will be eligible.
Major changes proposed
• The universitywide salary grade structure has been adjusted by two percent, effective October 1. The adjustment means the range for a group of titles moves upward, and an individual salary would change if it fell below the new range minimum.
• The Berkeley campus proposes to move non-exclusively represented employees in step-based titles into broader merit-based salary ranges (80 percent range spread), effective October 1. More than half of these employees is currently at the salary range maximum, and broader open ranges allow for greater salary flexibility. Because they will be in the merit-based pay program, these employees will no longer be eligible for automatic range adjustments.
The non-exclusively represented employees proposed to move into merit-based ranges will no longer be on a delayed merit cycle. Employees with a July 1, 2000 merit review date (delayed from Jan. 1, 2000) will be eligible for a merit increase effective July 1. These same employees will also be eligible for an additional merit increase effective October 1. Employees with a Jan. 1, 2001 merit review date (delayed from July 1, 2000) will be eligible for a merit increase three months earlier, effective October. Thereafter, merit increase eligibility for all employees in this group will be October 1 of each year.
• For Professional and Support Staff Grades 1-6, the campus proposes to expand the salary range spread from 50 percent to 80 percent, to better align these ranges with the Management and Senior Professional salary structure. This change will allow significant expansion at the top of the range, for greater flexibility in salary setting.
• The range spread for PSS Grade 7 is 85 percent. This new grade will be used for positions that do not meet the leadership criteria for the MSP program, but for which marketplace salaries require this level placement.
• The Berkeley campus is proposing to move the Programmer/Analyst and Computer Resource Manager salary structure back into the MSP/PSS salary grade structure. The campus created a separate salary structure with very broad ranges for those positions in 1997 to provide the salary flexibility needed to hire and retain employees in these positions. While the ranges are approximately 80 percent wide, Berkeley's MSP and PSS ranges have only been 50 percent wide. But changes to both MSP and PSS ranges allow the campus to move the computing jobs back into these structures. The proposed MSP/PSS grades were selected based upon whether computing position levels were more appropriate for MSP or PSS, and so as not to disadvantage current incumbents. The proposed conversion of the structure to the MSP/PSS structure is posted at (http://hrweb.berkeley.edu/PAY/00parang.htm).
Student employees
To simplify salary administration for students, the Berkeley campus is proposing a major revision, to be effective October 1, to the use of the student assistant series on campus. Rather than place students in a wide variety of staff titles, which are for the most part represented by bargaining units, the campus will place them in one of four titles (the student assistant I-IV series).
Students who have casual-restricted appointments and are covered by Personnel Policies for Staff Members, will be placed in the revised student assistant series, based upon salary level of the work involved. The campus will utilize all four levels of the student assistant series (Assistant I-IV; title codes: 4919-4922). The campus proposes the following rates:
- Assistant I (title code: 4922) $5.75/hr. to $8.50/hr.
- Assistant II (title code: 4921) $8.51/hr. to $12.50/hr.
- Assistant III (title code: 4920) $10.50/hr. to $16.00/hr.
- Assistant IV (title code: 4919) $16.01/hr. to $30.00/hr.
A proposed list of assistant titles and salary ranges and the corresponding current titles, which will no longer be utilized for casual-restricted student employees, is posted at (http://hrweb.berkeley.edu/PAY/asstprop.htm).
Contact Human Resources with questions and comments about the proposed salary plan, no later than August 10 at hrweb@uclink.berkeley.edu or by mail to Sandra Haire, assistant vice chancellor for human resources, 207 University Hall, MC 3540.
July 12 - August 16,
2000 (Volume 29, Number 1)
Copyright 2000, The Regents of the University of
California.
Produced and maintained by the Office
of Public Affairs
at UC
Berkeley.
Comments? E-mail berkeleyan@pa.urel.berkeley.edu.