Letter to UC regarding COLA and medical plan costs

Dear DFA members,

Our colleague Walter Leal has forwarded the following note asking faculty to sign on to the letter to President Drake, Provost Newman & Academic Senate Chair Cheung regarding COLA and medical plan costs.


Dear Colleagues,

We wrote a letter to President Drake regarding COLA and medical plan costs, but please read the note below before reading the letter and considering signing it: https://forms.gle/TJZhUsD9fDtLdDCk9 (To sign, please click NEXT on the bottom of the page, left side).

As you may know, effective September 1, UC Davis Chancellor Gary May received a salary increase of 33.7% on top of COLA to a current base salary of $895,000 (a monthly base salary of $74,583 – equivalent to the yearly salary of an AY Assistant Prof Step I, $74,600). Likewise, the Chancellors at UCI, UCM, UCR, UCSB, and UCSF received increases of 31.7, 32.1, 28.7, 24.2, and 16.6%, respectively. “The UCSC Chancellor voluntarily forego an approved increase of 28.5%;” see a footnote on page 5 of the approved document. President Drake – who will step down on July 31 – received a 25.3% base salary increase. Again, all these increases are on top of the 4.2% COLA (on a 12-month basis). Faculty received merely 3.15% (4.2% over nine months).

Meanwhile, at the Representative Assembly of the Davis Division last week, our Provost speculated that there may not be adjustments to faculty salaries (COLA) next year because of budget constraints.

All the best, Walter Leal