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Oregon’s average income rose 2.7%, UO’s faculty fell 1.1%

2/5/2019:  After adjusting for cost of living increases, Oregonian’s average real income rose 2.7% last year:

The UO faculty, not so much:

1/18/2019: Provost announces 1.1% pay cut for UO faculty

I’m no economist, but I can subtract. Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the cost of living in the western US increased by 3.1% over the past year. And this week our Provost reported that UO faculty would get an average 2% raise:

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

I want to remind you that January is the month when fiscal year 2019 salary increases kick in for both represented and non-represented tenure-track faculty (TTF) and career non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF) at the University of Oregon.

The fiscal year salary increases are provided to faculty members who meet the eligibility criteria, which requires an appointment as of December 31, 2018.
Faculty members currently in the tenure-track classification received a 1.25 percent across-the-board increase on January 1, 2019, and that will appear on the January 31 paychecks. There’s an additional pool of 0.75 percent to address equity that will be distributed after an internal study currently underway is completed. Funds from this equity pool will be distributed as soon as they are available, consistent with the United Academics collective bargaining agreement and the related memorandum of understanding. For more information on the equity study, please refer to the Faculty Salary Equity Study webpage.

All increases provided from the equity pool will be retroactive to January 1, 2019. If there are funds remaining in the equity pool after equity decisions are made, those funds will be applied as an additional across-the-board increase to TTF.
Under the collective bargaining agreement, career NTTF members received a 2.0 percent across-the-board increase on January 1, 2019, with those increases appearing on the January 31 paychecks.

For more information on faculty salary increases, please refer to the Annual Salary Increases webpage. If you have any questions, please contact Human Resources by email at [email protected] or call 541-346-3159.

With warmest regards,
Jayanth Banavar
Provost and Senior Vice President

Next year the faculty union’s MOU with the adminstration calls for average raises of 2.125%: 1.625% for merit, and 0.5% for external equity, so exceptionally excellent faculty in departments that have been underpaid for years may actually get small increases in real pay. The rest will get another cut.

How are we doing in comparison to other universities? I don’t know, the annual update on UO’s IR page from the AAUDE data is now 4 months late, and Director JP Monroe has stopped responding to my emails.

12 Comments

  1. Conservative duck 01/18/2019

    Shared sacrifices!

    Well…until you near the top of the pyramid scheme, that is. Gotta have a golden parachute to survive THOSE heights.

  2. Dog 01/18/2019

    Thanks UOmatters for pointing to real data

    after noodling around a bit I uncovered this

    https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/data/consumerpriceindex_portland_table.pdf

    for the portland salem area to 2017

    From that I list the CPIs from the time of the Union (2012?)

    2012 2.3
    2013 2.5
    2014 2.4
    2015 1.2
    2016 2.1
    2017 4.2 (!)

    I had no idea that the CPI jumped so much. I knew I had less beer money at the end of each month in 2017, and this explains it.

    ATB’s do need to be done in a sensible context – I don’t think 1.25% is sensible – but of course, I realize that the UO HAS NO MONEY

  3. UO CM 01/18/2019

    Wow you guys are seriously out of touch with reality here.

    I hope you all receive massive cuts in your salaries and pensions when the next recession hits.

    • honest Uncle Bernie 01/19/2019

      You sound like a real nice guy.

  4. Deplorable Duck 01/18/2019

    Arguably, unless several faculty quit in response, they’re doing the fiscally responsible thing. Or something.

    But on an unrelated note, check this out:

    BS is hypercommercialized college athletics and administrations sucking the teats of big money, often in the process exploiting and discarding rather than educating student athletes, and recurrently corrupting recruitment programs, tutoring services, and grading systems.

    The quote doesn’t do it justice, but definitely worth a skim. And my faith in Sociology is somewhat restored.

    https://www.chronicle.com/article/Higher-Education-Is-Drowning/242195

  5. OMA 01/18/2019

    I do not know if Mr. Monroe is a Scotch or Espresso person, but bring him a bottle or cup, mend the fence, and rather than ask when ask why… as in ‘Why is IR not able to get this data out in time.’ Off the record of course.

    • Data Nerdling 01/19/2019

      And why is IR data only presented in crappy PDF, rather than a useful format for data analysis?

      There is no excuse for late, not to mention incomplete, data.

      Furthermore, temp employees are not included, thus making six digit double dipping “retired” administrators hired through temp agencies invisible.

  6. Environmental necessity 01/19/2019

    Isn’t this raise detailed in the contract? Did people really think the administration would offer more than the negotiated raises? Am I missing something? The contract assumed a CPI that no longer prevails; seems this is a good issue to make a part of the round of bargaining coming up.

    The framing here, especially the headline, feels of a piece with the worst click-baiting on Buzzfeed. Or maybe the idea is that the Administration is conspiring to drive up the CPI in order to punish faculty?

    • Big XII 02/08/2019

      Off the top of anyone’s head do they know what a COLA costs on campus? On mine a 1% COLA for everyone (staff & faculty) is 4.5 million. Just something to think about as you ponder increases.

      • uomatters Post author | 02/08/2019

        i’m no macroeconomist, but I believe the real cost of a 1% raise when inflation is 1% would be 1% – 1% = 0%. Not that university budgets are based on real money.

        • SoCrates 02/12/2019

          So if everyone around the was given a 1% raise we would just wait for inflation to come and write the check?

  7. It's classified. 02/04/2019

    By this math, classified staff took a 2+% pay cut? It’s time for the Campus Labor Council to come back with a vengeance.

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