In light of the misconception that the certification of our union has delayed or prevented the implementation of raises, our bargaining team also formally requested that the administration raise faculty salaries by 3.5% for this academic year, while reserving our right to negotiate other components of salary.
Gottfredson has only one rational response to this:
“I’ll see you that 3.5%, and raise you another 3.5%. Now let’s sit down and talk about merit, and getting departments up to their AAU comparators.”
UO pay still at bottom of AAU 10/25/2012:
| University “peers” in bold) |
Full
|
Associatee
|
Assistantt
|
| Harvard University | $198,400 | $120,900 | $109,800 |
| Columbia University | $197,800 | $125,000 | $99,000 |
| University of Chicago | $197,800 | $114,100 | $102,600 |
| Stanford University | $195,400 | $131,200 | $109,800 |
| Princeton University | $193,800 | $123,700 | $94,200 |
| New York University | $182,400 | $106,100 | $99,700 |
| University of Pennsylvania | $181,600 | $117,800 | $112,300 |
| Yale University | $180,400 | $108,600 | $89,700 |
| Duke University | $175,300 | $114,500 | $96,000 |
| California Institute of Technology | $172,800 | $121,300 | $111,300 |
| Washington University in St Louis | $172,400 | $100,200 | $96,800 |
| Northwestern University | $172,100 | $110,200 | $98,900 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | $171,800 | $120,300 | $102,800 |
| University of California, Los Angeles | $162,600 | $107,400 | $87,400 |
| Cornell University – Endowed Colleges | $161,800 | $113,000 | $97,000 |
| Rice University | $159,500 | $106,000 | $86,600 |
| Vanderbilt University | $158,300 | $98,600 | $76,500 |
| Brown University | $156,700 | $99,300 | $82,300 |
| University of Southern California | $155,900 | $105,300 | $93,300 |
| University of California, Berkeley | $154,000 | $104,600 | $92,300 |
| University of Michigan, Ann Arbor | $148,800 | $98,200 | $85,800 |
| Rutgers University, New Brunswick | $145,000 | $98,400 | $78,600 |
| University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill | $144,000 | $94,600 | $80,500 |
| Carnegie Mellon University | $142,000 | $98,900 | $101,200 |
| University of Virginia | $141,600 | $95,000 | $80,300 |
| Georgia Institute of Technology | $141,300 | $94,600 | $86,800 |
| University of California, San Diego | $140,700 | $90,900 | $87,000 |
| University of Texas, Austin | $140,700 | $89,900 | $83,900 |
| State New York Stony Brook | $140,500 | $99,500 | $78,100 |
| Tulane University | $140,200 | $86,600 | $71,500 |
| University of California, Santa Barbara | $138,600 | $85,400 | $78,500 |
| University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | $137,200 | $86,500 | $83,600 |
| University of California, Irvine | $137,000 | $89,800 | $80,700 |
| University of Maryland, College Park | $136,300 | $95,700 | $83,900 |
| University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh | $135,800 | $90,000 | $75,000 |
| State University of New York Buffalo | $135,400 | $93,100 | $77,400 |
| Ohio State University | $134,200 | $89,300 | $81,500 |
| University of Rochester | $133,800 | $97,200 | $93,500 |
| Pennsylvania State University, University Park | $132,100 | $89,200 | $76,100 |
| Case Western Reserve University | $131,200 | $85,800 | $79,200 |
| Brandeis University | $130,000 | $90,500 | $84,400 |
| University of Iowa | $130,000 | $86,400 | $74,100 |
| University of California, Davis | $129,400 | $90,600 | $81,300 |
| Michigan State University | $128,600 | $89,200 | $69,500 |
| Indiana University, Bloomington | $128,400 | $87,000 | $77,400 |
| University of Minnesota-Twin Cities | $125,700 | $86,000 | $79,100 |
| University of Colorado, Boulder | $125,500 | $90,300 | $77,500 |
| Purdue University | $125,100 | $87,100 | $79,100 |
| University of Washington, Seattle | $122,700 | $88,300 | $79,300 |
| University of Florida | $121,700 | $80,100 | $68,900 |
| Texas A&M University, College Station | $120,000 | $83,100 | $72,800 |
| University of Arizona | $119,900 | $81,800 | $70,800 |
| University of Kansas | $116,100 | $78,800 | $69,200 |
| Iowa State University | $115,900 | $83,500 | $75,100 |
| University of Wisconsin, Madison | $114,700 | $87,400 | $75,900 |
| University of Missouri, Columbia | $113,900 | $75,900 | $61,700 |
| University of Oregon | $112,300 | $79,600 | $74,000 |
| AAU Average | $146,616 | $97,233 | $85,114 |
| Average of 8 UO “peers” | $134,950 | $90,650 | $79,175 |
| UO as % of average | 77% | 82% | 87% |
| UO as % of peer average | 83% | 88% | 93% |
| $ gap between UO and peers | ($22,650) | ($11,050) | ($5,175) |
This is 2011-12 data from the AAUP. The Lariviere plan was to raise average UO salaries to our peer average by department and rank. So this gives you a rough idea of what Gottfredson’s refusal to grant raises now is costing you. I’ll have a better breakdown if UO ever gives me the correct data by department. NTTF data is also coming soon.
Note: Johns Hopkins and Duke did not report. Medical schools are excluded. Not sure about Law. UO’s self-identified peers are in bold. 10/25/2012.
And what does UO get from its faculty, in return for this shoddy pay? 2 years ago we posted this, from the NRC rankings, in a form that even an interim provost could understand:
https://uomatters.com/2010/09/idiots-guide-to-nrc-rankings.html
9/29/2010: IR has posted a spreadsheet of UO’s NRC rankings here. If you use the numerical ratings alone (i.e. ignore the reputational survey) and use the midpoint of their confidence range, then divide by the number of programs evaluated in that discipline, you get a crude percentile rank. Here’s that data for UO. So our Psych department is doing the best of all UO departments, at 16%. 11 of our 21 programs are at or above the 50th percentile in their field. Not bad for a university that pays its full professors 84% 83% of the average, and which spends 63% 63.25% of the average on research.
Note that the NRC only bothers to evaluate a subset of the best PhD granting programs, and these percentiles are relative to that subset, so showing up on the list at all is not too shabby an accomplishment.
| Percentile | Department |
| 16% | Psychology |
| 24% | Geography |
| 26% | Anthropology |
| 26% | Biology |
| 36% | Mathematics |
| 36% | Geological Sciences |
| 37% | History |
| 38% | Physics |
| 43% | Comparative Literature |
| 44% | Economics |
| 50% | Political Science |
| 57% | Communication and Society |
| 57% | Chemistry |
| 64% | Philosophy |
| 65% | Linguistics |
| 71% | Music |
| 75% | English |
| 77% | Computer and Information Sciences |
| 77% | Human Physiology |
| 91% | Theatre Arts |
| 94% | Sociology |
Dog says
While I have no doubt that the UO is on the bottom I think this kind of straight averaging on the list can be misleading. I suspect these salaries include all faculty, like medical school faculty and law faculty (which I think has raised the UO average salary at the professor level). It would be great, but hard, to see this list only for equivalent CAS colleges, and similar for AAA, etc, etc.
I have several colleagues (to the extent dogs are collegial) at UW and there average salaries
are always greatly inflated by including the Med School.
In addition, I do know that Johns Hopkins salaries are outrageously high and they may be in fact, be number 1.
But the basic point stands. THE UO SUCKS for competitive faulty compensation.
These data don’t include medical schools or any data from Hopkins or Duke (they don’t report). I will post breakdowns by department in a few days.
dog say
yeah I suspected that medical schools are eliminated
but law schools probably not?
Dog did this in committee meeting today
the following is a list of Law Full Professor Salaries. The
average is 142 thousand.
201
156
152
150
147
146
146
146
142
140
136
132
130
130
128
128
127
124
Gottfredson’s refusal to grant raises? It never came out on the other thread on this subject, but if Gottfredson raised wages for the TTF, he/we would be exposed to a clear charge of having committed an unfair labor practice now that we have a certified union that includes mostly NTTFs (who will have much less to bargain for if lots of money goes up front to TTF raises). And of course that issue comes on top of the commonsensical recognition that you set yourself up for failure if you go into a negotiation having already given away much of what you have to give. If we’re going to have a union, we can’t be incredibly naive about how a unionized workplace functions.
So it appears that having a “certified union that includes mostly NTTFs” is already hurting the TTF.
That is absolutely INCORRECT. There is no prohibition on granting normal salary raises (e.g. COLAs, across the board, or based on some rational standard) due to pending union negotiations. This is a UO preference, not a real concern of unfair labor practices. In fact it could just as well be argued that giving raises now would be an ADVANTAGE for the administration by making it harder for the union to argue for MORE raises.
The union site even says,” If they want to give raises, they can simply request that we as a union agree. ” As anonymous above points out, it’s unlikely that the union (composed mainly of NTTF) would actually agree to a TTF only raise at this point.
Spelling words in capital letters (the anonymous comment above)does not make a point accurate. Of course there is no explicit prohibition about granting salary raises, but if one group within a bargaining unit can claim that management has adopted a position that will disadvantage it in anticipation of negotiations, then a charge can be made that management has engaged in an unfair labor practice. That’s what granting raises to TTF would leave the university open to right now (or would have left them open to last spring, when raises were originally planned). If you doubt this point, just look at the cases that have been brought of this sort. And of course our all-caps commenter had nothing to say about the naivete of going into negotiations having already given away much of what one has to offer.
Can you send a link to some of these cases?
And note that nothing, except pride and stubbornness, prevents the administration from implementing the same plan for NTTFs, right now.
The raise would have to be negotiated with the union. The union is saying “no of course not, we don’t need to negotiate a raise – we’ll just rubber stamp it”. But that’s not likely to be true. If the administration came to the union with a proposed raise for TTF and NTTF, would the union not want to look it over very carefully to ensure an equitable distribution between the groups? How would this not turn very quickly into a negotiation? Might as well wait until formal negotiations.
So many comments in this string seem to be based on insider knowledge of deliberations within United Academics. If so, perhaps the anonymi should think twice before revealing the substance of its discussion. Or is it the case that I am mistaken entirely, and the anonymi are merely engaging in uninformed speculation?
I don’t think uninformed speculation is allowed on this blog, so it must be the former.
But I agree with uomatters – the admin should call the union’s bluff and blow all the cash on a TTF raise right before negotiations. What’s left to negotiate?
The background to this discussion was people asking why the administration can’t hand out rounds 2 and 3 of the previously-planned raises (see here: https://uomatters.com/2012/10/uo-cant-give-raises-because-of-union.html).
In light of that, I think it’s worth looking very closely at the union’s statement: “our bargaining team also formally requested that the administration raise faculty salaries by 3.5% for this academic year.”
The union has pretty consistently used the term “faculty” to cover all of the bargaining unit members — TTFs, career NTTFs, adjuncts, postdocs, research associates, etc. And as far as I know, not all of those groups were included in the previous plan (someone can correct me but I believe it was just TTFs and career NTTFs). So I read the union’s statement as asking for a wider set of raises. Not a request to finish the Lariviere raises as they were planned.
I am no lawyer, but I think every person who had a written notice that a raise would be at hand prior to the union vote (not that this may matter either unless something invalidated the original contract). I would think the raise is contractual and therefore, just voting in a union has no bearing.
Are the faculty at Nike law silent because it is not their union or they were not getting raises.
Finally, did the Administration get their raises that were part of the same agreement? It is brilliant that the admin sold it to the press as faculty raises, but the ones who got the bulk of the cash were senior admin who had already announced leaving getting a hefty bump, which affected their tier 1 pers for the rest of her life.
“I would think the raise is contractual”
Game over.
I, for one, never received a written notice of the planned raises. What I recall is an announcement from our Head in a Dept Mtg that the deans had such a plan. If that’s all anybody else has, I doubt its contractual binding in the way Anon above suggests.
Dog says
An across the board 3.5% raise for faculty is essentially a the expected COLA amount as accrued over the last 18 months
Is the salary freeze still in effect?
You eggheads are fighting over a 3% raise? Chip just gave all his coaches 21% plus a fat bonus.
Where’s the misconception? We unionized. The new union didn’t get raises, as clearly explained by the University. So what am I missing? I appreciate them asking, but hiding behind weasel words doesn’t improve my confidence in our collective bargaining.
I’m also troubled to see that none of the hard sciences are represented in the bargaining unit. Seeing as how the hard science folks tend to be paid more (you know, because of grants), I have a bad feeling about how fairly everyone is going to be represented.
I agree about the lack of hard scientists. What’s more, if you look at the five TTF in the unit, they are all in the humanities; even the social sciences aren’t represented.
Of course the reason for this is clear; none of the scientists wanted to unionize in the first place, so they made little effort to get involved after the union formed.
Actually, most of the productive scientists aren’t in the union or bargaining unit or whatever you want to call it.
We should be clear with our terms here. There’s a difference between the bargaining “unit” and the bargaining “team”. The team is the actual group of people who will be sitting at the table hammering out the terms of the contract; the unit is the whole group of people on whose behalf they’ll be bargaining. While it’s true that the team does not include social scientists, it is not at all the case that they are excluded from the unit; same for scientists, though more are excluded from the unit as PIs (about which we’ve had ample discussion in the past).
My assumption–and it’s only an assumption, because I’m not in the know–is that they picked for the team those they felt would drive the hardest bargain on behalf of everyone. Presumably the admin will do the same.
Despite the ‘ample discussion’ it’s still unclear who is and who isn’t in the bargaining unit. There are *lots* of science faculty who are excluded — who didn’t get the invitation to last week’s lunch gathering, for example. Some are “PIs” (what exactly does that mean?) who supervise others in the bargaining unit. Some, like me, are science faculty who not supervise others, but who are mysteriously excluded. My queries to the union about what the reasoning is went unanswered months ago, and from talking to people who are asking similar things there seems to still be no answer. I am sympathetic to the union, but I really get the sense that they have no idea how the sciences work, or they just don’t care.
The “excelsior list” of people in the bargaining unit is here.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/971644/uomatters/Union/Final%20Excelsior%20List%20%2800380294%29.pdf
It’s from April, I’m sure there will be constant changes based on changing admin assignments, etc.
Thanks, but I’m already aware of the list. I’m not aware of the *rationale* for being on or off the list. Please don’t write that PIs who supervise others in the bargaining unit are off the list and others are on. Or that faculty with external grants are off the list and others are on. Neither of these statements is documented anywhere I’ve found, and neither matches the reality of who’s on and off the list. I don’t mean this to sound mean-spirited at all — I just would like, and would appreciate, clarity!
Why not just try to join, and see if they’ll let you?
I confess that I don’t fully understand either. Though they did provide some rationale back in April, I’m not at all clear who makes the decision or how. Is it made by the union vis-a-vis membership? Or will it be made by the admin, with regard to who falls under the collective bargaining agreement once it’s agreed upon.
Ok, team instead of unit. My mistake in the terminology.
I’ve followed the formation of the unit and spoken with the reps. My feeling comes down to this. The national union is interested in the dues, and I don’t think they really give two shakes about us. I actually saw one national union rep tell a colleague that to not sign the card would “put him on the wrong side, and he didn’t want to be on the wrong side.” They also showed up at his door at 9 am one morning, pounding on it and demanding to talk to him. As a naturalized citizen from Russia, he was appropriately terrified.
Meanwhile, the reps basically froze out any discussion that questioned them or was critical of them. The people on campus running this show seem to have no idea what they’re doing, but do seem to be interested in representing only their humanities minority view. I know of at least two people in the hard sciences who have been involved in the unionization, and I’m surprised to see neither of their names on the negotiation team.
The whole thing is a mess, and I think we’re going to be worse off for it. I see furloughs, no pay raises, and a union that collects dues from everyone but is toothless in every other regard.
I am a cynic by nature and I signed the card only after weighing the arguments above against the reality of 15 years of Johnson Hall neglect of UO. After that, wanting t have a say, I applied to join the OC, and I’ve been on it all summer. I’ve been impressed with the amount of work and the organization they’ve put into it. You are right that it would be better to have more science representation. Regarding dues, of course the affiliate unions are interested in this revenue. But it’s not a one shot game, and they have no interest in seeing the UO union fail or fall into a bitter science/humanities or TTF/NTTF fight. Since you are interested in these matters I hope you will get involved, vote, keep up with the bargaining process, and try and join the OC!
I’m a cynic too, and I agree with anonymous that in many ways it’s a mess. Thus I did not sign a union card last year, and am not rushing to become a member this year. I’m holding by breath but not counting my chickens that they’ll accomplish anything.
That said, I know all of the TTF members of the bargaining team, and several other members of the OC. They are good people. I trust them to represent my concerns and interests fairly. Of course, they can only represent my concerns and interests if they know what those are: it’s incumbent upon me to communicate that, no matter how cynical I might be.
And while I myself am a humanist, I feel quite certain that the members of the bargaining team are wholly open to hearing from and doing their best to understand and appropriately represent the interests of the scientists. The union OC comprises a lot of people, and I can’t vouch for them all; maybe you’ve encountered a bad egg or two in the past. Try talking to one of the “team” members, even if its to offer critique. They can’t take your concerns and interests into account if they don’t hear from you.
When did the Humanities faculty become a “minority”?
Among the 5 TTF on the team, Yvonne Braun is a social scientist.
Keep in mind that these people are going to have a helluva lot of work to do. I know at least one social scientist on the OC who just doesn’t have time–wants to spend time with his kid for a change!–and so declined to serve on the bargaining team. If you know a scientist on the OC willing to make this time commitment, tell him/her to step right up!
It can be a one shot game, though. A union is a living entity that is an extension of the national group, and once it’s funded it will operate to keep itself alive. This may be at the expense of the people it supposedly represents.
One only needs to look at the other union on campus to see this. Furloughs, pay cuts, the step system, these are things that hurt the members, and are made possibly by the union. Good workers leave, bad workers work the system and keep it running.
The union is there now. If it doesn’t work, good luck on ever breaking free of it.
The real question is whether the union can upgrade the situation of the NTTFs on campus. It’s fairly clear the TTF will not benefit, at least fiscally. The latter have already lost out on a salary raise last spring, and soon they’ll be faced with a 1-2% dock in salary to support the union, which will surely not be enough to offset whatever salary raise the bargaining team is able to get for the TTF over and above what they would have gotten under any circumstances. If the NTTF situation can be improved, though, maybe it will be worth it.
Regarding “Why not just try to join, and see if they’ll let you?” and “If you know a scientist on the OC willing to make this time commitment, tell him/her to step right up!” There are certainly science faculty who are pro-union, and quite a few who are generally sympathetic. However, even in this case, why would they (or I) expend time and energy to work with the organizing committee when the rules that determine whether we’re in or out of the unit are so murky? Why would I become part of an organizing group of an organization that I (probably) won’t belong to? If the answer is that it’s an altruistic thing to do, I can assure you that there are plenty of more well-deserving charities / causes to spend time on. For a union, I expect some rational reason to contribute.
I do believe the union organizers are good, hard-working people, trying to benefit everyone. (And I dislike the mean-spirited tone of some of the anti-union comments here.) Without some clearly stated rationale about membership, and, relatedly, some awareness that the sciences exist, however, I can’t muster up any enthusiasm to cheer for the union.
I agree wholeheartedly, and in fact very much dislike the pat union “come join us and contribute!” in response to complaints like this. That said, becoming a member of the union requires, I believe, no time commitment at all; it’s not the same as the OC.
At the same time, it’s simply not possible to complain that no scientists are on the bargaining team and no one’s representing the concerns of scientists and in the same breath offer a rationale for why scientists shouldn’t bother with the union.
I would think the number of TTF scientists in the union is low, so it isn’t surprising that the representation on the bargaining team is also low. I do think something should be done to make sure postdoctoral fellows have a voice in this process. Before someone chimes in that they should just join, it needs to be realized that postdocs have structural barriers to contribute. Many are here for only 4-5 years, and need to show research productivity to be employed elsewhere at the end of that time. So for them the cost of participation is high, and the benefits are likely to be short-term. Most are also employed by lab heads, who probably don’t think they should subsidize union work with hard-won grant dollars. So how to give them representation?
Great discussion. Let’s not forget the one or two polls last spring which suggested that a majority of TTF were opposed to the union. It is illogical to run a faculty union in which the tenure track faculty, our most prominent scholars and highest achieving researchers and grant getters, are out-voted by non-tenure track faculty, postdocs and lab technicians. The NNTF have rights that need to be addressed, clearly. But to group tenure track faculty with postdocs and lab techs, and then split TTF into those who are in and those who are out (with no explanation of the criteria for that split), does not make any sense and is divisive in ways that we have not even started to explore. Result? Say goodbye to meritocracy. Brain drain. Matter of time until we are booted out of the AAU. Union propaganda says. “Last spring UO faculty voted to unionize”. Ouch. This claim is blatantly incorrect and conveys a spirit of unity around this issue which does not exist. All of the problems that were discussed last spring still exist.
Complaints: (1) we were not given a chance to vote on this, which would have been the correct process for such an important matter, (2) the very slim majority for the union is questionable because it was obtained in a secret card check that was hurriedly approved, (3) in the current union structure, our most accomplished and nationally recognized scholars are outnumbered and outvoted 2:1 by NTTF, postdocs and lab technicians. What to do? Have a vote, the vote we should have had last spring. Why not find out if the majority of UO faculty really want a faculty union? Such a logical, fair, and democratic process still has not occurred, but it’s possible.
The only way this union is going to work is if it has teeth. To have teeth it needs to be willing to strike. Does anyone here really believe that there’s enough support in this organization to stop business on this campus if demands aren’t met?
Meanwhile, the state will happily collectively bargain us into further irrelevance.
Dog’s woeful contribution
I remember commenting on this about a year ago in terms of whether or not the concept of “research time/support” will be an important element in the CBA in terms of the overall flow chart of equitable workload.