After two weeks of feedback from UC employees about his furlough and salary cut proposals, UC President Mark Yudof said university officials will try to keep retirement benefits intact while considering deeper cuts to top-paid employees' salaries.

In a memo Tuesday, Yudof said he received "thousands of communications" from staff and faculty systemwide about which furlough or salary cut proposal to present to the UC Board of Regents at its July 14 to 17 meeting.

According to the memo, Yudof said officials will consider a combination of a 3.4 percent pay cut and 12 days of furloughs for all employees.

Yudof also said the university will seriously consider greater pay cuts for employees who are among the highest paid-a move many staff union leaders have called for.

But some said they are still skeptical about plans to cut lower-paid workers' salaries.

Tanya Smith, local president for UPTE, said the university should still look at its reserves and other sources of funding before cutting pay.

"It seems to me that's the place you need to go to before you go to people who haven't gotten a raise in a few years and say, 'we're cutting your salaries,'" she said.

Yudof also wrote that he will urge the regents to keep retirement benefits intact if furloughs and salary reduction options are implemented.

Keeping retirement benefits is a key issue for faculty, particularly the older members close to retirement, said Yale Braunstein, a professor in the School of Information and chair of the Committee on Faculty Welfare in the Academic Senate.

If the UC system does not keep retirement benefits from being affected, one of Yudof's options to enact an 8 percent salary cut would have a lifelong impact, Braunstein said.

"That would mean a 5 to 6 percent reduction in their retirement benefits forever," he said. "That seems inherently unfair."

Berkeley's Academic Senate is calling for faculty to provide input to use in drafting a statement to send to Yudof, said Mary Firestone, chair of the Academic Senate and a professor of environmental science, policy and management, in a campus-wide e-mail Tuesday.

Yudof said in an online video Friday that the university is trying to spread the pain in its attempts to balance an $800 million deficit.

"What we're trying to do is distribute the sacrifice and not unfairly call on one group or another group to make up part of this deficit," he said.

But Amatullah Alaji-Sabrie, statewide executive board member and chief negotiator for the Coalition of University Employees, said the UC system has not fully shown the crisis it is in to require such drastic cuts.

"They have to be more open, more honest and forthcoming about the facts of the UC position," she said. "Until they completely open the books to us, they should not expect participation."

Tags: UC PRESIDENT MARK YUDOF