UO: lowest salaries for faculty – and administrators at the trough

6/8/2009: After a year on the job Provost Jim Bean discovers – from a news article in a Missouri student newspaper we posted here – that UO’s faculty are the lowest paid in the AAU. This is after he wasted a huge chunk of IR and Senate time trying to defend UO’s excessive salaries for administrators – including his own. Better late than never. The good news is the Lariviere quote – but of course Frohnmayer has promised the same thing ever since the Senate white paper came out in 2000: faculty salaries were his “top priority”. Right.

(A comment points out that Bean knew this already – he’s writing this email to make it sound like he is “shocked to discover…”. )

From: James Bean [mailto:[email protected]]
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

_______________________________
James C. Bean
Senior Vice President and Provost
202 Johnson Hall
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1258
T 541-346-3186
F 541-346-2023

Steve Duin at the Oregonian has a post about this. In related news, on Friday the OUS Board approved emeritus status and a new contract for Frohnmayer. We’ve requested the contract, and should soon know how much we have to pay Frohnmayer to finally get him to stop being President.

The Gist of the Furlough Plan

Senior administrators at UO earn 100% of their comparators.
President Frphnmayer earns $150,000 more than his comparators.
UO Faculty earn 83% of their comparators.
We’ve taken voluntary cuts for years.

When Frohnmayer and the VPs have given back enough salary to get down to 83% like us, we should have a serious conversation.

ICC memo

(From May 2009)

MEMORANDUM
To: Units receiving ICC beginning budget allocations
From: Rich Linton
Subject: ICC Beginning Budget Allocations- FY10

ICC- FY10 Beginning Budget

The ICC beginning budget for FY10 will be posted in the coming days, and I write to communicate two key decisions regarding the overall allocations effective July 1, 2009.

1. I do not plan to “sweep” any FY09 fund balances from existing ICC indices, other than those already negotiated with the units directly impacted. In light of the voluntary FTE reductions in ICC-funded positions for the remaining three months of FY09, some of the ICC carryforwards should be impacted favorably.

2. I will apply a 4% “across the board” cut to virtually all line items in the ICC beginning budget for FY10, including research administrative units reporting to me. The few exceptions include the library, lease payments for off-campus research space that involve fixed costs, and a few instances for centers that are involved in pre-existing agreements related to ICC “backstops” or ICC deficit reduction. No cuts will be made to prior commitments to provide multi-year ICC allocations, for example faculty start-up packages or grant matching funds.

It should come as no surprise that the state budget crisis impacting the University of Oregon has placed escalating stresses on my overall ICC budget, especially in aspects such as faculty recruitment and retention, graduate student support and research infrastructure. In addition, the federal F&A “overhead” rate at the UO was reduced from 48% to 42% effective July 1, 2008 and is beginning to impact on reduced F&A recovery from grants and contracts. The funds available for ICC distribution are being significantly constrained despite the growth in new sponsored program awards.

I will evaluate the need for recurring reductions in ICC allocations as we move through FY10. I am hopeful that the Federal “Stimulus” will enhance UO’s research funding and associated F&A generation in the months to come.

Thanks, as always, for your understanding and support. Please let me know if my office can address any questions or concerns.

Best regards,
Rich

bargaining 37 stuff

ADMIN TEAM DELAYS BARGAINING UNTIL 1PM TODAY, TUESDAY. 

GLEASON DRIVES OFF, TOLD TO CHECK FOOTBALL PALACE CUSHIONS FOR LOOSE CHANGE:


CECIL RALLIES FACULTY FOR 14.5%, OR STRIKE:


Bargaining: Tuesday 9/3/2013, 1pm-4pm(?), Room 122 or 101 Knight Library.

9:00 AM: Gottfredson meeting with his $100K a month bargaining team:

The most recent admin proposal was for 10.5%. On Thursday the union countered with 14.5% – down from their initial 18%. Gottfredson’s team is meeting now to finalize the proposal they will present to the faculty at 10AM 1PM today – be there.

Raises: The elevator version:

We’re going down. During the first year of President Gottfredson’s administration UO faculty pay has fallen still further behind other AAU public universities:

  • Full profs: down from 85% to 82% 
  • Associate profs: down from 92% to 90% 
  • Assistant profs: down from 93% to 89%
The relative drops are mostly driven by pay raises at the other AAU schools, however UO’s average pay for assistants and fulls has actually fallen, presumably because of composition changes. The retroactive 1.5% ATB raise proposed by the admin’s for 2012-13 is only for 6 months, so it’s really only a 1% raise. Sneaky. Either way it is not close to enough to make up for the ~3% UO faculty lost relative to other AAU publics between Fall 2011 and Fall 2012. Much less enough to get the elevator going up. And the administration has been fibbing: UO benefits don’t make up salary gap.
I’ll live-blog it, meanwhile here’s some background:

Their conclusion is that while both effects are at work, Bowen effects dominate in public research universities, with $2 in increases due to administrators seizing on increased revenue for every $1 in increases due to upward pressures on faculty and staff salaries from other industries. Same for private research institutions. What’s more, they find a plausible culprit within universities. They notice that cost increases are likelier when the ratio of staff to faculty is higher. That suggests that when administrators within the university accumulate bargaining power, they’re better able to force increases in costs. The administrative staff, they suggest, is what’s really driving this.

By administrative staff, they presumably mean central administrators like Jim “38%” Bean. Say Jim, any update on how much our administration is going to piss away in Portland this year? Thanks to an anonymous reader for the link. From the WaPo’s excellent “The Tuition is Too Damn High” series, inspired by:


9/1/2013 Bloat update: Lots of rumors flying around – and I didn’t start all of them – that the administration’s haste to wrap up bargaining is motivated in part by a desire to get the economics off the table before the latest administrative bloat data comes out:

From: Bill Harbaugh 
Subject: public records request, non-classified employees
Date: September 1, 2013 11:55:21 PM PDT
To: Lisa Thornton Cc: J P Monroe , [email protected], Andrea Larson , [email protected], [email protected]

Dear Ms Thornton:

This is a public records request for a machine readable file in excel, comma delimited, or any other standard format showing the following information for UO non-classified employees as of 9/3/2013:

First Name, Last Name, MI, University Email Address, University Office Address, University Office Phone Area Code, University Office Phone Number, Employee Type, Academic Title, Job Type, Job Title Job Start Date, Yrs in Position, Fac Prim Activity, Home Department, Rank, Rk Date, Pay Department, Annual Salary Rate, Appt Percent Job Status, Job End Date, Appointment Status, Term of Service, EEO Type, FT/PT

I ask for a fee waiver on the basis of public interest.

I’m ccing a few people in the UO IR office, who should be able to easily provide these data.

The prior data on this is from the error ridden Beangrams, and the most excellent presentations of the AAUP’s Howard Bunsis. March 2013 update for UO here:

“Institutional Support” means central administration, more or less.

Tuesday 9/3/2013, 10am-4pm, room 122 or 101 Knight Library, be there.

Rumor from the spectators at the annual faculty club ping-pong semi-finals is that Gottfredson has told Geller and Rudnick to stop their $100K a month billing frenzy and cut a deal, quick. The large faculty turnout at the Thursday meeting had its intended effect, and Rudnick’s flip-out didn’t hurt either.

Rudnick will apparently meet with Gottfredson et al at 9AM to get his instructions. As you can see from the spreadsheet below the union has already come down from 19.3% over 3 years (compounded) to 15%, and has made concessions on health, childcare, and promotion raises as well. The majority of the faculty I’ve talked with feel that if the union offer is not acceptable as is, we should strike during week one.

The bargaining will start at 10:00 AM. Show up Tuesday and find out what concessions Gottfredson is prepared to make on governance and on Geller’s “we own your IP and everything on your computer” proposals. The word from the spectators on Th was that the process and personalities were “interesting”, but not so distracting that you couldn’t get a few reviews done, if you sit in the back. And fun to socialize with your colleagues during the breaks. Not to mention the excellent homemade baked things – consider this a public records request for the recipe.

Synopsis from session XXXVI, Thursday 8/29:

  • Practice drill for strike goes off well. ~100 faculty show up on a summer day when they’re not even on contract. News on the SEIU strike preparation in the ODE here.
  • Some chatter about discipline for Rudnick over her disrespectful treatment of faculty and library staff this morning. Does UO’s respectful workplace policy apply to $300 an hour lawyers? 
  • Union holds firm on raises, only minor concessions. Rudnick seems to have new instructions from Coltrane, sounds ready to deal.
  • After lunch, still about 60 faculty in the room. No visible support for the admin team. No Altmann, no Moffitt, no Geller, no one with any actual authority to deal. No wonder this takes forever.
  • After getting all medieval on me for “posting of false and inaccurate information about bargaining” the administration’s bargaining team is now trying to keep me from posting copies of the presumably fact-based transcripts they’ve been taking at every bargaining session – their stenographer has been typing away all day. Latest here
  • Art 49, use of UO computers, a.k.a as the Stasi Clause. They own you.

Your Guarantee of Truthiness: All UO Matters bargaining posts are fact-checked by Geller and Rudnick’s secret team of well paid consultants, who post their spin on the official UO Admin site, hereIf you pay Dave Hubin $285.98 he’ll even tell you who wrote it.

Proposals so far:


Here’s hoping this bargaining gets wrapped up quickly, so Sharon Rudnick and her HLGR colleagues can get back to their important civil rights work – for Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds:

Article 30: Overhead Policy and Transparency

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/971644/uomatters/uauoregon.org/files/2012/11/Article-30-Overhead-Policy-and-Transparency.pdf

1 December 13 and 14, 2012
1 UNITED ACADEMICS PROPOSAL
2
3 ARTICLE 30
4 OVERHEAD POLICY and TRANSPARENCY
5
6 Section 1. The Faculty Research Committee, made up of at least seven (7) faculty
7 members appointed by the University Senate, shall develop policies and
8 recommendations concerning the following:
9
10 1. The negotiation and establishment of university Facilities and Administration
11 (F&A) rates;
12 2. The collection and distribution of F&A funds;
13 3. The publishing of data describing the collection and distribution of F&A
14 funds;
15 4. The rates, collection, and distribution of non-F&A funds which may be
16 charged to grants;
17 5. The rates, collection, and distribution of the general overhead expense;
18 6. Bridge funding for faculty who are temporarily between grants.
19
20 Section 2.  The Faculty Research Committee will work closely with the Vice President
21 for Research and Innovation in developing these policies.
22
23 Section 3. The Faculty Research Committee will have recommendations ready by May 1,
24 2013. Recommendations will be forwarded to the Vice President for Research and
25 Innovation and the President for implementation. Copies will also be sent to the Union
26 and the President of the University Senate.
27