Today the faculty union had a bargaining session with the administration, but nothing happened on salaries because the administration still has not provided the union with the analysis discussed in the email sent out to the faculty under Provost Long’s name 2 weeks ago.
As an aside, I can understand Scholz’s desire to blame this sort of email on his provost so that he can claim the faculty’s love when he finally caves on salary – but doesn’t he understand that lying about the obvious things is not the way to build trust? FWIW there’s some relevant work by his former colleagues at Wisconsin: Building Rational Cooperation, Andreoni and Samuelson (2006).
The money graph from “Long’s” email:
This analysis shows that, when adjusted for retirement contributions, payroll deductions for health insurance, and cost of living, UO faculty total compensation is at 98.3 percent of the average of our AAU public peers. Key findings of the analysis include …
This was then used to justify the administration’s 3% a year raise proposal – far less than enough to even keep up with inflation, much less move salaries to the AAU average, a goal first proposed by President Richard Lariviere back in 2009. Scholz’s proposal would lead to a further decrease in UO compensation both in real terms and relative to the AAU, Big-10, etc.
Contrast what Scholz had Long send to the faculty with the email Lariviere had his Provost Jim Bean send out here:
From: Provost
Sent: Sunday, June 07, 2009 12:26 PM
To: Deans Working Group
Subject: Faculty Salaries
The Missouri article stating that UO has the lowest salaries in the AAU has caused quite a stir (we have since verified that they were correct). Low salaries were always thought of as just Oregonian. But 34 out of 34 is a whole other thing. We cannot have this. Richard’s reaction was “this is job #1.” Richard will likely have an announcement on how we are attacking this when politically feasible (after last gavel). Please communicate to your faculty that the Missouri article really got our attention. This may require disruptive solutions.
Thanks, Jim
We’re still at the bottom of the AAU – the faculty I mean – UO’s top administrators are now in the middle – but now we’ve got a President who thinks that’s where we belong:
From: “Provost Christopher P. Long” <[email protected]>Subject: UA bargaining update: Salary offer and AAU comparatorsDate: August 14, 2024 at 2:00:32 PM PDTReply-To: [email protected]
- We are fully committed to an outcome that positions UO faculty and the university for long-term success. Our core principles to advance university strategic goals, ensure operational flexibility, offer competitive total compensation, and maintain responsible financial stewardship guide our negotiations during this bargaining cycle.
- During this process, we must ensure that we are managing the institution’s long-term financial sustainability. When comparing the university to the Association of American Universities (AAU) peer compensation data, it is important to recognize that we do not have the same financial resources as those institutions. Specifically, in FY2022 (the last year comparative data was available) the UO received $86.4 million from the state whereas the average state appropriation for AAU peer institutions was $416.2 million. This means that the UO only had $3,863 of state support per student FTE, while the average AAU peer figure was $10,410. This difference equates to roughly $146.5 million per year of annual recurring state funding after adjusting for differences in enrollment size. AAU financial resources comparator data is detailed on the HR website and was shared in a previous email on March 18, 2024.
- In line with our core principle of competitive total compensation, we are working to support faculty salary increases through this negotiation process. While salary is the largest part of total compensation, the university’s retirement contributions and health insurance are important components, and they must be considered in any compensation comparison between the UO and our peer institutions.
Total compensation at the UO compared to AAU peer institutions
- Higher institutional retirement contributions at UO compared to our peers reduce the amount employees need to withhold from their pay to accumulate retirement savings.
- UO faculty members continue to pay significantly less for health insurance coverage than their AAU public peers.
- The cost of living in Eugene is lower than average at our AAU public peers.
Retirement Savings Comparison
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University of Oregon
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4.00%
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Average at AAU peer institutions
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7.56%
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The value of employer contribution to UO retirement benefits continues to be higher than at most of our peer institutions. In comparing defined contribution plans (Optional Retirement Plan at UO), the maximum employer contribution to a new faculty member’s retirement plan at the UO is 12 percent while the average maximum employer contribution of our AAU public peers is 8.4 percent. This means that an employee at UO needs to deduct an average of about 3.6 percent less from their salary to establish the same level of retirement savings as an employee at a peer institution. PERS, the defined benefit pension plan available to faculty, represents an even larger compensation investment, but due to the difficulty of comparing pension benefits across institutions, we have not included a comparative analysis of the value of PERS.
Health Insurance Comparison
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At the University of Oregon
TTF and Career Faculty |
1.28%
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At average AAU public peer university
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6.19%
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Comparable Adjustment Factor to AAU Public Peer Institutions
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Adjustment Factor
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Percentage of AAU Peers after Adjustment by Factor
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Starting point: Current UO TTF salaries
(fall 2022 data). |
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85.7%
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Health insurance: UO withholds 4.9% less from faculty paychecks than the average of AAU public peers.
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Divide by 0.951
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90.1%
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Retirement savings: Withholding from salary is higher for AAU peer faculty by 3.6% to obtain the same contribution to a defined contribution retirement plan.
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Divide by 0.964
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93.5%
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Cost of living: Based on MIT cost of living data, the cost of living for faculty at UO is approximately 95.1% of what it is at our AAU public peers.
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Divide by 0.951
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98.3%
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- Jan 1, 2025: 3 percent across the board
- Jan 1, 2026: 3 percent merit pool
- Jan 1, 2027: 3 percent merit pool
Next steps in bargaining
Provost and Senior Vice President
Director of Employee and Labor Relations
Just looking at that paper, they say “We examine a twice-played prisoners’ dilemma in which the total of the stakes in the two periods is fixed, but the distribution of these stakes can be varied across periods. We verify experimentally that it is best to “start small,” reserving most of the stakes for the second period.”
Perhaps the admin is just trying to wait it out until the strike threat can be evaluated as real or not?
I’ve heard of imaginary numbers before, but I apparently didn’t go far enough into the field of mathematics to discover this convenient formula of
[YOUR REQUEST] / [MY BULLSHIT] = Go Fuck Yourself
And at a previous meeting, admin had the gall to equate administrator compensation to faculty because they have the same health care costs and retirement funding rates. Utterly ignoring that higher average salary (close to AAU average) means more take home pay and more funds being put in admin retirement accounts, making us anything but equally compensated.
Lowly…
So you are saying that by their own math Oregon Administration is way over paid and need to take about a 10-20% cut.
Also since the Economics of scale does not support it (especially such a top heavy model) Administration needs to cut the top spots and whole VP arms of the Org chart… Anyone remember when Chereck, Mosley and Frohnmayer were around? Now how many people does it take to do the jobs those three did (I would guess at least 4-6 fully staffed VP departments now days) It is like we pay more for so much less. That $90 million in state support would seem to be directly tied to the perhaps incompetence of the Administrators who’s job it is to go and beg, borrow, or secure that money from the state! Finally, what is the growth of TTF compared to Administration over the past 20 years??? 4x? 6x? more?? The real number not that one where they claim to have a dozen or so OA’s.
I’m not suggesting admin salaries be cut, but that faculty salaries are brought up to an equal percentage of AAU comparators. Not sure re: current numbers but it is there is a nationwide trend toward fewer TTF faculty and more administrative positions that we likely follow.
It seems that total compensation, if measured truly and fairly, makes sense. Where, if anywhere, does the admin argument fail?
I can’t say where (or if) it fails, because Hal Sadofsky, a perennial Associate Math Prof and now Interim Executive Vice Provost for Academic Administration, who sits on the administration’s bargaining team and presented these numbers to the union, has failed to show his work. I trust you know how to grade that sort of answer.
To take one example of the complexities involved in the claims in the brief explanation given by Provost Long, look at our geographically closest AAU comparator, UW. UW’s retirement benefits page at https://hr.uw.edu/benefits/retirement-plans/trs-3-retirement-plan/ notes about one of their retirement plans for new faculty hires:
The defined benefit part of UW’s plan requires *no* employee contributions. A professor retiring after 30 years would get 30% of their 5 years of average highest salary (therefore accounting for inflation) for the rest of their life, without paying in anything. In addition, employees contribute additional pre-tax money to a defined contribution plan, invest it how they like, and get market returns with all the risks and opportunities that entails.
UO offers a similar plan with a defined benefit portion that is more generous (if I get it right 45% instead of 30%, and a defined contribution portion that I invite you to try and understand – see https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/4/20053/files/2024/02/ORP-Guide-5-Tier-Four-Plan-Features-2024-67440355cb103539.pdf
Then there is the UC system. Since my PhD is only in economics, not math, I won’t try and analyze it. However if I understand the defined benefit plan you put in 7% of pay and after 30 years you get 75% of your final salary. See https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/wp-content/uploads/forms/pdf/complete-retirement-benefits-guide-for-employees.pdf
Comparing these plans must have required some strong assumptions and careful calculations, none of which Sadofsky has as yet been willing to show to your union.
Aren’t there stats on both salary and salary + benefits (total compensation) from the AAUP? It seems to me that is the place to start. Not some unknown method from Sadofsky.
I remember back in the ’90s when the administration proposed a multi-year plan to get UO faculty salaries to 90% of peer salaries. As I remember, it was a ten-year plan. Of course the effort was abandoned way before the proposed period had expired. So it’s not as if the quest to get our salaries higher only started in 2009. It is an aim we have proudly been managing to disregard for many decades.
Observer, I decided to try to look this up, and found the relevant info at the web link below. The UO “White Paper” was a plan in 2000 put together by the UO Senate Budget Committee with Provost John Moseley — imagine! — to bring UO total compensation (salary + benefits) up to 95% of our competition over a period of 5-7 years. The 95% level seems to have been related to a slightly lower cost of living in Eugene, very similar to what obtains now.
The total compensation figures were obtained, apparently, from AAUP documents. It must be possible to obtain such info now, I would think. Whether it accurately represents the true value of the benefits with the convoluted state of Oregon pension plans, past and present, I don’t know. But surely such info is better than trying to guess what Hal Sadofsky is thinking, however worthy that may be.
It makes good reading! The positivity unmatched at UO, as far as I know, both before and after. Again, this was 2000. Yearh, when the U.S. was running a budget surplus and before 9/11, the Iraq war, the Great Recession, Covid, 10/7, all those big bummers. You can find the doc at the link below. It must be an interesting story how it got derailed after a good start. Lariviere “The Hat” got canned I believe in 2009 because he tried to put in some big raises to belatedly begin to achieve the goals of this plan.
https://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dirsen990/SBCfinal.html
darkwing is still up? Wow, what else is still out there?
There have been many darkwings.
Is it true they archived darkwing because Disney complained it was a parody of Donald?
Give it up to admin for this somewhat brilliant spreadsheet strategy. Ten bucks (or my part of the 3% merit pool, whichever is bigger) says that the union team fwiw now spends most of its energy and bargaining leverage arguing whether or not our cost of living is 95.1 or 96.1 to our comparators instead of focusing on COLA and everything we ended up giving them during the pandemic.