Janet Lockwood

Janet Lockwood of UCOP is currently presenting and taking questions.

Janet Lockwood also talked about the Commission on the Future, as a major UCOP initiative. Lockwood said that can't think of any of the commission workgroups where the libraries don't have an interest (budget, etc) -- and strongly encouraged librarians to give feedback to the commission.

The other major initiative at UCOP is the HR committee on post-retirement benefits; they have been visiting all the campuses. The issue is to present to the campuses the status of the retirement plan, and post-retirement benefits (esp. health benefits). We were assured however that the retirement benefits we have are not going anywhere.

There's also a major study of salaries in the system, including for librarians; with a comparison to 8 other schools (including Harvard and MIT). The report was just posted on the website: see the link to the report.
The report used the salary data of 535 librarians (including ULs and AULs).

Lucia had asked Lockwood to address two additional issues including:

* The distinguished step -- Lockwood mentioned that there are similarities between the distinguished step and step 6 of the ladder faculty; which just got worked on by UCOP. However: there was no consensus in UCOP about step 6, though; it really depends on the local campus. Similarly, Lockwood thinks that UCOP would see the distinguished step as part of the normal merit review process; they wouldn't intervene in that discussion.

* The second question was about the trend of hiring outside the librarian series, especially with technology. Again, Lockwood said that UCOP supports local authority and tries to stay out of the decisions that are made at the local level.

Finally, Lockwood mentioned that the restructuring at UCOP continues; her department has gone from 17 to 8, for instance.

Questions:
A question was asked about the disparity of distinguished step requirements; merit increase requirements are very different on various campuses. The questioner said that it's a little disingenuous for UCOP to say it's up to the individual campuses, since so much is *not* left up to the campuses.

response: UCOP needs a written summary or chart of exactly what role you want UCOP to play in determining the step. OP won't write the criteria, but they are happy to facilitate among the 10 campuses.