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	Vol.7, No 57, December 8, 1999
	Faculty pensions to soon increase By Jason Kosareff Daily Forty-Niner California State University faculty will receive enhanced retirement benefits starting Jan. 1 because of a recently passed law benefiting all state workers. Gov. Gray Davis signed Senate Bill 400 into law Sept. 29, granting more than 1 million state employees enhanced retirement benefits, which fattens faculty pensions. "It's an incentive to retire earlier," said Robyn Mack, Cal State Long Beach director of budget and human resources. It is not clear how many CSULB faculty will retire, Mack said. The state matches the amount of money state employees pay into the Public Employees Retirement System, which in turn invests the money in stocks or other ventures on behalf of the employees, Mack said. The retirement system maintains $155 billion to pay the pensions of retired state employees. "[The retirement system] has made significant gains in investments," Mack said. Employees who retire at the age of 55 will receive an annual pension of 2 percent of their salaries times the number of years that they worked for the state. For example, a professor earning $50,000 annually for 10 years would receive a pension of $10,000 a year from the state if retiring at 55. This amount is in addition to Social Security benefits. Retiring after the age of 63 raises benefits to 2.5 percent, Mack said. California police, including campus police, and firefighters will receive even greater benefits, grabbing 3 percent, Mack said. "We always worry when our tenured faculty retire," Mack said. An experienced faculty member has "an enormous knowledge that a junior faculty member doesn't have," Mack said. Retirement is just an option, "depending entirely upon their personal circumstances," she said. Tenure-track professors in the CSU system earn about 12.5 percent less than the national average for the same position, according to a survey of 20 comparable schools across the nation by the California Postsecondary Education Commission, an advisory commission independent of the CSU. That means CSU professors make $9,336 less than these professors. "Retiring faculty will have to be replaced. With salaries depressed [the CSU] won't get quality faculty," said Hamdi Bilici, president of the California Faculty Association, which represents all CSU faculty. Bilici worries that talented teachers will "go somewhere else and get more money."		Snow falls on L.B. neighborhood   Faculty pensions to soon increase   Students taught to plan concerts   New traffic light may be needed on campus   Report warns parents of toy dangers Low cost school Harris could score at will   49ers predicting team will rebound against Air Force Fall 99 ISSUES DAILY 49ER HOMEPAGE
Forty-Niner Publications, Department of Journalism, California State University, Long Beach ©1999 All rights reserved.