Eligible employees at the UC Davis Health System will receive pay for two bonus days during the holiday period rather than the time off campus employees are set to receive.

The UC system is instituting a new one-time Bonus Leave Program that gives two days bonus paid leave for eligible non-represented staff employees. The original plan anticipated handling UC Health system employees differently.

"We cannot shut down our medical facilities during the holidays when we have patients to serve and care for," said Dennis Shimek, senior associate vice chancellor of Human Resources. "The operational requirements of the hospital and other market equity issues unique to health care created a serious need to offer another alternative."

Shimek noted that the Bonus Leave Program mandated that an "equivalency" of value be found between what health system and campus employees received.

As a result, eligible non-represented employees at the UC Davis Health System will receive a one-time .77 percent increase in their pay, equivalent to two days off, in December 2004.

"Both campus and health system employees are being treated the same in terms of the value of those two days," said Shimek.

Examples of employees who will receive the payment for those two days include staff physicians, dentists, senior management, career employees, limited, partial-year career, and contract and floater employees.

Shimek said that essentially the same eligibility criteria for the two-day bonus leave program will be used to determine eligibility for the UC Davis Health System lump-sum payment.

To receive bonus leave as a campus employee, one must be a staff employee with a career, limited, partial-year career, contract or floater appointment.

For campus employees, the bonus leave will be used Dec. 28 and 29, 2004.

The two-day leave program will provide two additional paid leave days (16 hours for full-time employees, less for part-time employees) to non-represented campus staff employees who do not receive a general salary increase in 2004-05.

The program is distinct from other paid leave programs such as holidays, vacation, or paid administrative time off.

In other compensation news, some health system employees in specific titles have been given raises, Shimek said. For example, nurse managers were given 5 percent increases; medical assistant supervisors 8 percent, pharmacist supervisors 6 percent, and billing analysts 4 percent.

"We recognize the immense contributions of the entire UC Davis work force in these difficult budgetary times," said Shimek. "Our health system operates in a vastly different labor and market equity environment than does our higher education community. To bring the highest quality medical care to our patients, we must recruit and retain the best medical professionals."

For more details about the Davis campus-based bonus leave program, see the Sept. 17 issue of Dateline online at http://www.dateline.ucdavis.edu.