{"id":219444,"date":"2010-01-22T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/opinion\/story\/2480634.html#mi_rss=Opinion"},"modified":"2010-01-22T03:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-22T08:00:00","slug":"viewpoints-uc-pay-bonuses-add-to-the-outrage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/219444","title":{"rendered":"Viewpoints: UC pay bonuses add to the outrage"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tBruce Maiman<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Time for a face palm. <\/p>\n

On Thursday, the University of California’s governing Board of Regents formally approved $3.1 million in incentive pay to 38 senior medical executives for meeting 2009 performance goals. <\/p>\n

The payouts range from $30,120 to $218,728. Not salaries – bonuses. <\/p>\n

The UC system is broke. It’s raising tuition and fees. Rank-and-file hospital employees are taking pay cuts and suffering layoffs. The board says it doesn’t like doing this but there’s no state money and they have no choice, so everyone has to share the pain. <\/p>\n

Yet they’re paying bonuses? Know what they’re based on? Lowering infection rates and increasing patient satisfaction. At a hospital. <\/p>\n

In other words, we’re hiring a professional at six figures to run a hospital, the expectation being that it’s infection-free, but he gets paid a bonus if he cuts down the rate of infection. <\/p>\n

Hello? Yes, we’re hiring a big-shot administrator for six figures to run my hospital and he’s saying, incidentally, I’ll make sure more of your patients are satisfied if you give me a $100,000 bonus. <\/p>\n

I don’t know about you, but that’s about the time I go to job applicant B. <\/p>\n

Obviously, no hospital is infection-free and not every patient is satisfied, but you’d think that keeping a hospital clear of infection would be a primary function for any salaried hospital employee, not something to be incentivized. <\/p>\n

So why do we pay the chief executive officer and the rest of the executive hospital staff a bonus to reduce the rate of infection? Rank-and-file workers have a legitimate gripe. When Board of Regents officials explained that times were tough and everyone, including the rank and file, had to bite the bullet, the labor organizations cooperated. They didn’t like it, but they understood and sacrificed for the common good. <\/p>\n

And now, despite tough times, executives are getting bonuses. The average bonus is around $82,000. Many UC workers make less than $40,000 annually and they took 4 percent pay cuts. <\/p>\n

UC officials quickly noted that about 22,000 rank-and-file employees also earned incentive pay last year, but their average bonus was $1,391, with many receiving far less and often on top of pay cuts. <\/p>\n

Mind you, the people getting bonus checks for amounts like $89,000, $181,000 and $219,000 – these are people already making significant salaries. <\/p>\n

UC officials said they had no choice: They were contractually bound to pay the bonuses. <\/p>\n

Otherwise they could be sued. <\/p>\n

Wait a minute, you had a contract with the employees through labor organizations that have the power to strike your shop and you didn’t hesitate to ask that they take a pay cut. Why didn’t you have the same compunction to tell the high-flying executives they’d have to forego their infection bonus or their customer satisfaction bonus? <\/p>\n

Understand: This isn’t about not paying executive bonuses and this isn’t a pro-union pity party. <\/p>\n

This is about whether it makes any sense to incentivize someone to do the job they’re already being paid a salary to do. <\/p>\n

It’s about whether performance measures are based on cutting direct health care staffing, and that the people mainly responsible for the efficiencies are the lower-paid line staff and professional staff, many of whom don’t make in annual salary what these bonuses call for. <\/p>\n

It’s about insensibly poor timing given the current economy, and it’s absolutely disingenuous to ask workers to take one for the team while excluding some of the players and then turn around to complain about a lack of state funding while raising student tuitions. <\/p>\n

There’s a disconnect between the regents and these administrations and the understanding that these are public service jobs, not private industry jobs. Someone in the ivory tower thinks that these people should be given salaries comparable to people in private industry. That’s not the deal. You serve the public and that’s understood before you enter the profession while also being cognizant that you’re spending public money.<\/p>\n

To be clear, the bonuses aren’t coming from state coffers. They’re coming from medical center revenue. But that’s money made thanks to state dollars invested but not returned to the system. <\/p>\n

Instead, that money lines the pockets of senior administrators. <\/p>\n

We should not be paying bonuses to people who are getting a salary to do what we expect them to do. Isn’t it about time the regents demonstrated that they understand the concept of fairness and ask that senior executives of the system share the burden being placed on the backs of the working stiff? <\/p>\n

And what are we doing paying people bonuses to do what we pay them to do already? Who came up with that cotton-headed idea?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bruce Maiman Time for a face palm. On Thursday, the University of California’s governing Board of Regents formally approved $3.1 million in incentive pay to 38 senior medical executives for meeting 2009 performance goals. The payouts range from $30,120 to $218,728. Not salaries – bonuses. The UC system is broke. It’s raising tuition and fees. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}