Our last raise was in Jan 2020. Since then the CPI has increased 6.4%. Average US wages have increased 6% (unadjusted). Meanwhile UO’s office of Institutional Research has stopped updating the comparison of UO faculty salaries to comparators. They also haven’t updated the listings of UO salaries since October – these were posted quarterly until President Schill put a stop to that during his first year. Now they’re only posted when IR gets around to it, and they no longer include coaches bonuses etc.
Not to mention staff salaries…
Basketball coaches, on the other hand, have been doing quite well: https://publicrecords.uoregon.edu/file/1264/download?token=BBdDNvsH
To put it in perspective, half of that increase was in the past 4 months. The Jan 20 – Jan 21 increase was actually quite modest, see the data table and do the arith. It’s a matter of policies deliberately adopted since the presidential transition? How many of you guys voted for this, is it really 98%? As my cheeky young nephews might ask me. Probably, I’d say “Maybe.”
Higher ed has been hurt by covid, we all know that. Does it feel bad to see that the deplorables are more in demand that we are? Yeah, probably. Are we willling to stand up for curbing wasteful spending? We all probably have our own candidates for places to cut.
What’s happened to the cost of education for our students?
Weren’t their tuition increases the last two years? That just gets sucked into spending more on admin whatever if it doesn’t go into salaries.
I suppose we could go back to a cratered economy and homicidal pandemic negligence to fight modest transitory inflation.
That was what they said back in the 70’s, that inflation would cure our unemployment and bring back prosperity. But it didn’t work then for the economy, au contraire, and I don’t think it will work now. As for inflation being medically beneficial, I won’t even go there. But things are not looking good on the covid front, have you noticed?
Of course the union is going to focus on parking and childcare crap. Let’s solve supply problems by lowering prices….
Your advice to the union is to ignore things the members think is important? Child care/dependent care is not crap for a very large share of the people who work at UO. Your privilege or selfishness is showing.
I have kids too. But I think people ought to have a bit of freedom to choose how they spend their money.
The point the union would be better offer proposing large raises and sticking to their guns, rather than sacrificing them for a small benefit that benefits very few members.
If they were to do anything, how about tuition support for more than 1 family member at once (this is a cheaper policy that will benefit those with families you’re worried about).
I agree completely with this. I bike and don’t have kids, and it’s fine if you pollute and breed, but I don’t want to subsidize either.
Oh, look, another self-righteous misanthrope virtue signaling to their biking friends who think the entire world revolves around them.
It is not a few members and the union is taking this position based on member feedback. Free tuition for family members is functionally irrelevant to parents with kids younger than ~17. Free tuition also does nothing for people seeking the dependent care benefit that is not used for kids and child care, as should be the benefit. “Freedom to spend their money” is code for “we make enough we can pay for child care without a subsidy and screw everybody else”.
The whole point of unions is that a market based system often fails many of the participants unless they can pool resources to effectively compete. The issue isn’t that the union (which one?) asking for lower parking costs and childcare creates a demand problem, it’s that the Administration refuses to address these issues on the supply side. Parking spaces, for example, have been repeatedly displaced for Administrative priorities such as premier athletic facilities that are only used a few days out of the year. The university is well positioned to offer lower cost childcare, but instead chooses to place priority on expansion of facilities in an environment where the long term trend is declining enrollment.
I agree that the union should propose doubling faculty parking fees and redistributing the surplus lump-sum. I’m less sure about children are they a positive or negative externality? But any university that teaches developmental psychology has a comparative advantage in supplying it.
Of course UO finally switched to a tiered parking permit structure. Not because the in house public economist advocated for it repeatedly even colllecting data showing the gains, it’s because they finally did a focus group and hired consultants.
Which sums why we UO spends too much on most things.
*Rolls over in grave*
Is the last “faculty raise” counted the one of Jan 2020?
yes
yeah that is what I thought so that is a lot of ground to make up (especially when JH continues to claim “we haven no money”) but I suppose philosophical exemptions will save us …