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Bargaining VII: Economics. Admin proposes 1% for merit, no ATB, no equity, and $600 one-time to buy this sweet 1964 Chevy van – if you sign the contract now:

Last updated on 04/11/2015

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Cocktail party version: Moffitt delivers on transparency – new docs reveal large increases in spending on Pres Admin Operations, Enrollment, Advancement, Police. No money left in the budget for faculty. Admin team then unveils their economic proposal, which is a one-time $600 and a 1% merit raise, delayed until 2017. That’s it. No COLA, no internal equity, no external equity.

Maybe it’s a classic bad-cop good-cop play. The unhappy looking admin functionaries sitting at the bargaining table got stuck with the bad-cop job. The faculty will get all riled up. Then in a few weeks the new President will come in, announce that she’s found the money for significant raises, get the credit for saving the university, and start off her tenure as UO’s Joan of Arc.

If not, I’ll forecast that the faculty will go on strike during week one of classes this fall. It’s been a tough year, and we don’t need any more shit from Johnson Hall and the Trustees.

Today, 2PM, Knight Library Collaboration Room. Be there.

VP for Finance Jamie Moffitt was supposed to present the administration’s counterproposal on raises March 9th. She bailed. But word is that, after paying JH thousands of dollars for public records on UO’s financial position, the union now has a firm commitment from Moffitt for an appearance. I expect the show and tell will start promptly at 2, get there early for a good seat.

Here’s the report on the union’s economic proposal: https://uomatters.com/2015/02/bargaining-session-iv-economics-thursday-226-10am.html

Live-blog: Usual disclaimer. My impression of what people said, meant, or should have said. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. If you don’t like my blog read Luebke’s.

Full house, including Diane Dietz from the RG. Standing room only.

As predicted, after stonewalling the union’s data requests for months, Moffitt now passes out 150 pages of financial data at the last minute, giving the union team no chance to digest any of it before she dives into her spiel. This is not the way to build trust. The spin begins.

Moffitt goes on through her spreadsheets – emphasizing state cuts, how they’ve “finally caught up with us”. All spin. Let’s cut to the chase, and the back of her packet, for the data I asked for months ago. In 2011 Richard Lariviere committed to getting UO faculty salaries to the midpoint of the AAU public universities. As of Fall 2014 (i.e. after incorporating all the raises from the 2013-15 union CBA), we’re here:

UO full professors earn 88.7% of the AAU average
UO associate professors earn 97.8% of the AAU average
UO assistant professors earn 94.6% of the AAU average

The average increase in pay over all ranks at other AAU publics last year was 3.2%. Assuming that continues, UO will need to increase wages by 3.2%, plus promotion increases, just to stay even in our current position towards the bottom of the AAU publics.

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Strangely, this figure showing how raises for UO’s top administrators have far outpaced the rest of the university isn’t in Moffitt’s packet – so I made it myself from the data on UO’s Institutional Research website:

Meanwhile, Moffitt is still going through her spreadsheets, trying to impress everyone with how smart and hard working she is to be able to keep track of all the university’s costs and revenue.

Presumably the administrative team will get to the meat of the discussion soon. Meanwhile I’ve got a game theory paper to review, live blogging will be light.

“I’m not trying to scare you” but Moffitt is worried that FEMA and the State won’t bail us out if there’s an earthquake? Come on.

Now she’s getting into the 2016 projections – which include money for propping up her husband’s law school, but not for faculty raises.

Some good news, the new HECC funding model is outcomes based, gives money for graduation rates for state residents, and UO is at the top for that. If things hold in the legislature, UO will get $6.4M in new state-funding next year, followed by another $2M.

Some bad news, expect a 9% increase in PERS costs.

Health insurance – some big savings possible here if we get out of the state system.

Jamie’s not going to talk about all the new money going to the UOPD:

3:30PM: Now she’s getting into the athletic department budget. Gives shout out to Rob Mullens: “Excellent financial manager, cares deeply about UO”. He will have no problem coming up with the 3% of revenue for the academic side that the UO Senate legislation requires.

Cecil: Have there been discussions about getting the $2.2M academics spends on the jock box back? Moffitt: No.

Cecil: What the hell happened with the explosion in General Counsel costs? Moffitt: We hired HLGR at $300 an hour?

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More on where the money is going:

Jamie doesn’t want to talk about the large increase in administrative hiring, relative to faculty. So she’s got some confusing spreadsheets. While she’s been talking, I’ve been getting data from UO’s IR department website.

Student enrollment has increased from about 20K to 24K over the period shown, or 20%. The number of officers of administration (FTE) increased by 55%. (The number of “senior administrators” decreased, because JH changed the definition to make themselves look good.) The number of faculty? Not so much. Staff? Student workers? GTF’s? Nope, nope, nope. Administrative bloat:

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4:10PM: Jamie wraps up.

UAUO’s David Cecil: Thank you Jamie, this was so much better than last time. And we recognize the the union and administration have made some progress on the goal of getting faculty salaries to the AAU averages.

Deb Green: Why don’t you include salary increases in your budget predictions?

Juanita Devereaux: Why are we faculty at the bottom of yout priority list?

Moffitt: It’s difficult. We want to invest in faculty and staff, but …. these are good questions.

Cecil: In the presentations you’ve made to the board, etc, you’ve said after all UO’s other priorities are met, there is only $1.2M left over for salary increases. Why is the faculty the leftover priority?

Moffitt backpedals.

Gina Psaki: Explains that the previous raises left faculty in the hole for years of salaries far below comparators, and still didn’t get faculty to the levels promised back in 2011. We see faculty leaving because of salary. We appreciate the information you’ve presented today on the budget, but we see many questionable expenditures – police, athletics, GC – we wonder what the administration’s real priorities are.

Cecil: So, you’re saying we’re running a little in the red – in the E&G fund – but over the length of the contract, reserves are still increasing?

Deb Green: So, does this university have a plan for investing in its faculty?

Moffitt: It’s challenging. We’re out there looking for funds from tuition, the state, donors – everywhere but athletics.

4:36 PM Cecil: Let’s caucus.

4:45: Bill Brady presents the administration’s economic counterproposal:

Faculty to get $600 up front – enough to buy a 1964 Chevy Van on Craigslist – and a 1% merit pool. One-time, over two years. No ATB, no internal equity, no external equity. (The $600 lump-sum is a classic management trick to try and split a union by driving a wedge between the low and high income members by tempting low income workers to take the offer. That said, the 64 had the 95 HP engine, and there’s a sick aftermarket blower.)

It’s a fuck-the-faculty offer:

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The union team is not taking this well. Lots of tough questions for Bill Brady about why it took 6 weeks to come up with this junk proposal. The crowd is half pissed, half amused at the absurdity of this offer. Murmurs of “strike, strike”. Other people are walking out in disgust.

This offer pencils out at about $1M for each year of the contract. Coltrane and Bronet spend $2M a year subsidizing the athlete-only Jaqua Jock Box. UO’s priorities look pretty damn clear.

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37 Comments

      • Cynic 04/11/2015

        Indeed! Anonymous. 30 years ago, two thirds of cost per resident student was paid by states and one third by students. Those proportions have roughly reversed ow, but who am I to argue with the New York Times? What that reversal and the initial two to one ratio has meant is that tuition had to rise twice as much as the state funding reductions per student.

        • uomatters Post author | 04/11/2015

          I don’t know as much about this as I should, but in declining state funding for universities has, in part, been compensated for by increased funding to the students themselves. According to the source below, grants to students (not loans) from the feds, states, and other sources have more than doubled in real dollars over the past 20 years. So while universities do get less direct state support, and are more dependent on tuition, at least some of the tuition increases are in turn paid from federal and state grants. But this shows up on the books as tuition, not as federal or state support.

          If anyone knows of a good summary of this beyond that below, please post it.

          http://trends.collegeboard.org/student-aid/figures-tables/average-aid-per-undergraduate-student-time

  1. yeah 04/10/2015

    So Provost Moffitt is trying the proof by intimidation method.

  2. Someone From the Library 04/10/2015

    UO full professors earn 88.7% of the AAU average

    UO full professors earn 94.6% of the AAU average

    Should that first one be adjuncts?

    • Someone From the Library 04/10/2015

      …and by that I definitely mean “assistant.”

      • uomatters Post author | 04/10/2015

        thanks, fact-checker! fixed.

  3. yeah 04/10/2015

    To me, her little administrative review, suggests huge unsustainable increases in administrative spending across all administrative units. If administrative expenses are going up by 10-15 percent a year (which it is for most administrative units), that’s non sustainable and will suck up any future raises we could get.

  4. year 04/10/2015

    Table 116 is crap. Averages can’t amount to something lower than the subcategories. Can we trust anything with typos?

    They also are not assuming that expensive professors (like those close to retirement or those who are productive and get poached) leave and get replaced by cheaper professors.

  5. yeah 04/10/2015

    If you compare the table on page 83, our calculated annual growth rate is probably about 2 percent a year over the last 5 years, so we aren’t last, we’re probably below PE but above the graduate school. We’re pretty damn close to last.

  6. GTFatLarge 04/10/2015

    Could we get a picture of the historic chart of administrative unit budgets?

    Combining “recurring” costs and “one-time” costs into a single figure is the opposite of transparent. Did the general counsel’s budget fall again after the 150% jump in the 2012-2013 AY? If so, maybe “we needed to hire lots of outside counsel to deal with you damn unions” is a serious response. If not (and it probably didn’t), that response is less legitimate than “I’ve only been on this job for 2 or 3 years now, there’s no way I have any idea what happened before I took over,” which Jamie Moffit repeated multiple times.

  7. strike bound 04/10/2015

    Time to put the university faculty on craigslist.

  8. Outsider 04/10/2015

    After the interim president chastised the senate and now this, someone in power is committed to telling the faculty they do not matter and they do not deserve respect from the administration.

  9. Anonymous UO Alum 04/10/2015

    Incredible. The Senior Admins have averaged about 6.3%/year annual salary increases over ten years while TTFs & OAs averaged about 3%/year. And classified staff even less. Thus the Senior Admins have gotten a real salary increase of 3 to 4%/year over the annual inflation rate, compounded. While TTFs and OAs has been treading water at 0 to 1% over the annual inflation rate. And classified staff probably sinking. How long is this going to go on? How long will people put up with this? Shows where the JH priorities are.

  10. Thomas Aquinas 04/10/2015

    $600 Bucks? Cool, what’s that in nano-Helfrichs? Or shall we refer to 1.5 Goats?
    The problem with the van is that we won’t be able to afford the gas. So this is much more practical. At least we’ll be able to paddle to work by river on sunny days or puddle skimming on rainy days: https://eugene.craigslist.org/spo/4969451025.html

  11. Peter Keyes 04/10/2015

    Just doing a little comparison here: if the total value of this proposal is $1.9m, that’s $0.95m per year. Mark Helfrich just signed a new contract for $17.5m over 5 years, or $3.5m per year. His prior salary was $2m, so he got a $1.5m per year raise. The proposal here is that the whole faculty of the UO gets to split 0.63 Helfrichs. It’s nice to have the priorities spelled out so clearly.

    • omg 04/10/2015

      This is the most telling thing.

      Time to Occupy Johnson Hall.

    • Gott 04/11/2015

      Lillis gave me $0.94m, suckahs.

      • Peter Keyes 04/11/2015

        We need an infographic on this: 1 Gott = 0.63 Helfrichs = 1800 faculty

  12. SaveUofO 04/10/2015

    I thought having a police department was supposed to save money. Anyone recall if it was $10,000 or something similar? The Jock Box needs to be cut out of the budget or give all students on campus equal access. Rob Mullens is an excellent financial manager who cares deeply about UofO? Then why is he trying to get into the pockets of students for more ticket money for tickets that aren’t even guaranteed? How many lawsuits have hit the school over the last few years and how much will they cost in the end? How much is athletics costing taxpayers in retirement and other benefits? All of this spells out an administration that is out of control and clearly not qualified to continue managing the school. Can you imagine how out of control it would be if UofO was a private institution?

  13. dog 04/11/2015

    Does that bitchin’ van have any GOATS in it?

  14. charlie 04/11/2015

    A couple days ago, UO Matters posted a salary comparison of a JH PR flack, and that of a full professor of physics. Guess who had the higher salary. As we’ve been told to the point of death, U of Owe needs to pay more to get the best and brightest. If so, salaries are indicative of what JH believes important. In other words, advertising >>>>>>>>> academics. Someone who teaches, cadges research $$$$, administers aforementioned $$$$, attempts to increase the academic stature of U of Owe, is not as valuable as a guy who maintains the Bernaysian miasma that going into debt to attend a fast rising party school is a proper way to spend the next six years after high school. Yass gets what you pays for….

    • Thomas Aquinas 04/11/2015

      … in the Jock Box or JH. John Belushi’s dead horse will pale in comparison with what you could do….

      I’m sold – let’s drop the van please – the manure spreader is so much more symbolic. A worthy successor of our goat.

      • uomatters Post author | 04/11/2015

        I don’t doubt that $550 manure spreader would do a better job than $130,000 Chuck Triplett. Perhaps someone will buy it and drag it over to the lawn in front of Chuck’s Johnson Hall office?

  15. Jack Straw Man 04/11/2015

    Once again I want to appeal to everyone who reads this blog to attend the bargaining sessions if they can. As the union always reminds us, it doesn’t matter if you can only go for a few minutes and stand at the back or side. It helps to show support. And it also helps, if you haven’t been here long enough to know everybody, to put some faces to the names you read here, and to just generally observe the affect of both sides. I managed to be there for a few minutes yesterday, and I saw a union bargaining team that was patient, competent, and handling a trying situation with good humor, and an admin team that was scowling the whole time, as if offended that they even had to sit at the table with a union.

    Our bargaining team are heroes.

  16. serious bid 04/11/2015

    Can union leaders please pricier information on how I as a faculty member might help organize support for a strike. I’ll walk as soon as our current contract ends, as will many in my department.

    • Buzz 04/12/2015

      I hear there are some union meetings in the next few weeks. Now is the time to push for a fall term strike plan. The real wage cut from JH was an insult to an extremely hardworking and talented faculty.

  17. omg 04/12/2015

    So I wonder if the students would be on our side. They are the one’s paying so much more for schooling. I bet that the students would protest one football coach getting more in raises than the entire faculty. If they are going to spend more on tuition, I bet they would prefer their favorite faculty stay, smaller classes etc? So the state is contributing an extra 8 million dollars in recurring dollars to faculty. Tuition is going up by 3.7 percent in one year (probably again next year). That will be about 20 million a year. So total revenues will be going up by at least 28-30 million dollars over the contract (probably more with grants and other revenues). And yet the admin is going to offer 10 percent of that to supporting faculty.

    Ridiculous.

    • anonec 04/12/2015

      Provide them the information: admin salaries and numbers, building costs, “entertainment” costs, etc. and compare it to their parents generation university model.

      Let them vote, or in admin speech, let the customers choose which product they want and push the admin for it.

  18. Bat Girl 04/12/2015

    Let’s buy that van and park it continuously on University Street near the turn off to Johnson Hall. Any faculty in support of the union could add coins to the parking meter to keep the van from being towed. Also, folks would be free to paint informative messages on the side of the van (maybe the chart of admin vs faculty salaries at UO). Everyone who works in Johnson Hall would have to pass by at least twice each day.

  19. Still clicking my heels 04/13/2015

    I’m in for $100.

  20. Wasaduck 04/13/2015

    On the upside that van will carry quite a few goats…

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