Forced Vacation Vote for UC Irvine Faculty, Staff is Today

Following approval of a plan Wednesday by its committees on finance and compensation, the University of California Board of Regents is poised today to force furloughs on more than 108,000 members of the UC faculty and staff, including those at UC Irvine.

University employees would be required to take anywhere from 11 to 26 furlough days under the plan forwarded to the board by the committees meeting in San Francisco. More furlough days and steeper pay cuts would be mandated on higher earners, reports the UC. The full board's vote on the plan is expected at 11 a.m. today.

KNBC/Channel 4 and Bay City News report the furloughs are expected to eliminate about a quarter of an $813 million budget deficit. The remainder of the savings would come from previously approved student fee increases, debt refinancing and cuts spread across the 10 UC campuses.

Irvine and other campuses have also been operating most of the past two years under hiring freezes. Rolling back the number of new hires annually is another way regents are expected to save money.