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Faculty will need 8.3% raises just to avoid a cut

Our last raise was in Jan 2020. The faculty union agreed to a wage freeze during the pandemic. Bargaining restarts soon. 

Since those last raises the CPI has increased 6.5%, and if current trends continue it will have increased 8.3% by Dec 2021. Median US wages will have increased about 9% (not adjusted for inflation).

Enrollment is up, tuition is up, state support is up, federal pandemic aid to UO is up, and many faculty have retired – including older higher paid Tier 1s with high PERS costs. So UO’s total labor costs for faculty have fallen. By how much? Hard to say. UO’s office of Institutional Research hasn’t updated the listings of UO salaries since October 2020. 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 show bonuses for coaches and upper admin, etc. (They also now omit most faculty summer pay.)

So how big will the 2022 raises be? 8.3% retroactive to Jan 2021 seems like the obvious place for Johnson Hall to start with – although that would still leave faculty having lost quite a bit of real income during the freeze.

6 Comments

  1. thedude 10/13/2021

    I’d be ok with 8.3 percent retroactive to last year and another 3-4 percent this January. Yeah we lost real income, but we didn’t end up furloughed…

    Heck if they did that our searches would go a heck of a lot better too this year….I’m sure people that are thinking of coming here don’t want to hear they’ll only get real pay cuts in the future…

  2. thedude 10/14/2021

    Also endowment is up.

  3. Underpaid_GE_Earning_1500_Per_Month 10/15/2021

    I just hope I can afford food by the end of this year.

  4. JH Newman 10/26/2021

    I’m with thedude. 8.3 retroactive to Jan 1. Another 3 0r 4 this January. We’ve taught in the face of the virus. We retooled and zoomed in the face of the virus, and now–as a masked old man–I am standing in front of a class of masked 20-somethings breathing invisible things all around me, which I take home to others, taking all the precautions I can.

    We’ve done our work. We saved the heart of the UO. Give us our due.

    • uomatters Post author | 10/26/2021

      The bond market is betting on 3% annual inflation for the next 5 years. JH is going to have to get used to baking that into bargaining.

      • Dog 10/26/2021

        baked bargaining?, surely you jest …

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