Bargaining XXII: Admin counter on raises?

Tuesday, 5/21/2013, 8-12 AM, Room 122 Knight Library, open to the public and reporters, free coffee and maybe donuts.

Your Guarantee of Truthiness: All UO Matters bargaining posts fact-checked by Randy Geller, HLGR and their lobbyist and public relations consultant, (and former Frohnmayer aide) Marla Rae.

Latest Fact Check: HLGR’s fact checkers agree with UO Matters that their colleague Dave Frohnmayer was negotiating his fat golden parachute retirement deal with Pernsteiner, at the same time he was trying to convince the faculty to take 5% furlough pay cuts. My post here, Frohnmayer’s pissy email here, their fact check here – they misinterpret my statement about his pay and ignore the screen shot of his pay records, don’t explain how it is that he’s listed on the HLGR bargaining invoice but is supposedly not advising the admin bargaining team, and then let the furlough/parachute statement pass their fact-checking without comment.

Synopsis:

• Still no admin counter on raises. After bringing in another $29M in tuition revenue this year, Jamie Moffitt is still piling on reserves to prepare for tornadoes. Top priorities such as the new cop car fleet are fully budgeted for, and there’s no money left for professors, unless OUS agrees to another round of tuition hikes. 
• UO’s reserves are about twice OSU’s. We are sitting on ~$63M more cash than they are, but somehow can’t afford the ~$12M difference between the admin and union raise proposals.
• Faculty will be required to tug the forelock and address administrators as “The University”, because the administrators in Johnson Hall are just that petty and insecure. President Gottfredson does not care what Frank Stahl and the Senate say about what the university is. It’s him. 
• Faculty support for boycott of Mike “The University” Gottfredson’s Matt Court investiture ceremony grows. 
• After calling for proposals to find money for raises, The University is now going to ignore the Senate resolution calling for a cut in athletic subsidies.

Prologue:

• 2 to 1 that Rudnick will come out of the turn and into the backstretch all nicey-nice, and fold on the we are “The University” language. No give on governance. More stalling on pay – though the news that Gottfredson’s compensation is in the top quartile, and UO’s reserves are twice OSU’s, might even embarrass her. No, I’m not putting any scotch on that last one.
• Time for the administration to get serious – they’ve been sitting on the union’s raise counter for weeks. Meanwhile Rudnick and her consultants are charging UO about $50,000 a month, for every month they can drag it out. Or maybe more – President Gottfredson’s public records office now wants me to pay $550, just to see one month of invoices.

Live-Blog: My take on what people said or meant to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes.

Cast: The usual cast of overpaid bill-padding HLGR types, Gleason and Blandy, no Cecil.

Rudnick: Nominations for Safety Committee.

Rudnick: Passes out summary of Moffitt’s revenue forecast for 13-14 and 14-15. Tries to use this to argue they can’t afford faculty raises. Bulk of it is a fall in grant funding, even though much of that has little to do with money available for faculty salaries. Fall in sports action lottery revenue that goes to the jocks anyway. Irrelevant. Sneaky attempt to confuse the faculty, Jamie. But we expect no less from you at this point.

Rudnick: Costing information for your last round of economic proposals. Always amusing to hear Rudnick stumble her way through a spreadsheet. “Um, line item so to speak … Um overall the proposal that you made came down about $2M.” “Needless to say we were very disappointed in you”. But we don’t even have counter proposals for you yet, we will wait to hear from OUS about tuition increases.

Mauer: We understand there is a limited amount of money and competing demands. We don’t accept your premise that faculty salaries depend on new revenue. Your thinking is that all other existing costs are immutable. We don’t accept that. We think the university has a large amount of money, needs to prioritize and budget. ($750M budget, we’re arguing about $12M.) We come to the table with an important set of priorities that need to be a priority. We are not here to take the leftovers. Whatever happens with tuition will determine the budget but it will not change the relevant priorities. It’s been 4 weeks now since we put our proposal on the table. They were reasonable (say 2% of the total budget?). Even if you accepted these, we would still be at or near the bottom of the AAU. (President Gottfredson’s pay is in the top 25% of his peers – first year in the job.)

We have many suggestions about where to cut. Your thinking is skewed. Faculty pay should not be at the bottom of UO’s priorities.

Rudnick: I reject your claim that priorities are wrong. You are ignoring the fiscal realities of this university. (Now she’s an expert on fiscal realities?) The people working on this are working hard to keep the university’s priorities secret from the faculty, that’s why President Gottfredson has set up a Budget Committee outside Senate purview. We cannot ignore the fiscal realities. Police, athletics, administrative pay, and my hefty feees all come first. That’s just the reality. We only have $63 million more in reserves than OSU does, and we cannot afford to pay you $20 million of that. We will have a counter proposal for you next session, but it’s going to be far from what you are asking.

Mauer: You should say “we are going to pay the faculty and then decide how much to spend” on fluff. So, the proposal on the table is funded and will not be withdrawn? You are saying that if there are tuition increases you will re-examine your office? Rudnick: Yes. Gleason: We will not come back with a smaller offer. Rudnick: Correct. OUS F&A committee will recommend tuition increases at their Friday meeting, they won’t be approved until June.

Rudnick and Gleason now get flustered about these increases. The tuition increase money will not be available dollar for dollar for raises. It’s a matter of fiscal prudence. We can’t give you more money without the increases. We have incorporated these tuition increases into our budget, but not into your raises.

Mauer: So, why not bargain with us assuming you will get these increases, in the same way that you form the rest of your budget, and then come back to readjust if the increases don’t come through? Rudnick: Because your raises are the last priority of the administration. Mauer: It’s frustrating when you come to the table with no authority. Rudnick starts to flip out again: “We represent the University!” Where the hell did this outburst come from? Mauer: You come to the table and tell us this is the way it is because Bean says it is, then you won’t bring him to the table to talk to the faculty?

Mauer: Let’s take a short break… We’re back.

Rudnick, snidely, “Are you ready to get back to work?” Mauer: We are working, lets get back to the economics, then do new counters.

Mauer: You are claiming there’s no money, we want you to show more specific information to support that claim. Rudnick: Tell me what you want. Mauer: We want to see your projections for spending by administrative unit, so we can figure out why faculty salaries come last. I’ll get you specific questions in writing. On the general topic of tuition and faculty salaries, it’s a fact that there have been large increases in tuition revenue, but little change in faculty salaries. We need to understand this. Rudnick: Doesn’t understand the question, tries to blame this on the comments by the OUS Chancellor on tuition increases. Green: Let me explain the question again. Faculty see tuition go up, more students, no raises. So we don’t see an empirical correlation between tuition and salary. And yet now you are trying to assert one in order to argue against raises. You’re new here, so maybe you don’t get this. But explain yourself. (Perfect opportunity for Gleason or Blandy to jump in and embarrass themselves. Gleason gives it a shot, but Rudnick interrupts him. Come on Sharon, let Gleason run free, it’s part of the fun of this all.)

Rudnick: After years of no raises, some faculty did get raises! And we are proposing ones that will still leave you at the bottom of the AAU. And we’ve increased administrative hiring 20% over 5 years, and only 9% for TTF’s. You people are already taking to much of the pie. You may not like the fact that we don’t have economic proposals yet but we are building a budget and we will not let you see it! I’m going to lecture you some more about budgeting, and then accuse you of stalling. We are going to wait for Friday’s F&A meeting before we talk money anymore. Mauer: Our philosopher would like to explain some things.

Pratt: Were have you cut and were will you cut next. This is a chance for you to build some much needed credibility, Sharon. Rudnick interrupts. Gleason interrupts. He can’t make a sensible statement. Pratt: What else might be cut? Rudnick: Books, IT, … Pratt: Have you told units that cuts are coming? Blandy: Money was held centrally for raises. Whoops, he didn’t mean to say that. Pratt asks about enrollment advancement, etc. Their budgets are way up. Blandy: Don’t know about that. Davidson: Stop calling a 10% raise after 10 years for NTTF’s “generous” especially when the central administrators have seen regular raises to keep them at comparators. There’s no shared sacrifice, and so I don’t take it seriously when the president claims he represents the entire university. Rudnick: There’s no fat in the administration to cut. Goes on to lecture us … Pratt: I was asking where you would cut if tuition is not increased. Blandy reveals there’s a plan. Gleason: blah blah incoherent blah … He thinks he’s being clever… “These are the hydraulics” Gag me. Please Tim, do tell us more.

Here are some places to cut:

Academic Affairs: 100% increase or $3.5 million, and they can’t even find the faculty handbook any more: