Cash-strapped UC adds high-salary positions

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

It has been a period of austerity at the University of California, with layoffs, across-the-board pay cuts and fee hikes. Yet some UC employees earned significantly more money in 2009 than in 2008, with two more million-dollar earners added to the payroll, new salary data show.

The number of UC employees classified as "senior officials" - earning more than $214,000 in total compensation - rose 6.3 percent, to 3,184 from 2,996 people.

Lucrative overtime pay also rose sharply. Employees earning more than $10,000 in OT climbed 79 percent, to 2,733 from 1,531 employees. UC's top overtime earner, an operating room nurse at UC San Francisco Medical Center, took in nearly $97,000, boosting her total compensation to more than $320,000. The figures come from just-released payroll data for 250,249 people paid by UC in calendar year 2009, and from UC's new report on executive compensation.

With compensation like that, it's no wonder how this group of self-interested voters wound up as number 1 on this list.