Sent out today. Full email here. More on the VP for EI’s excess cash problem here. The average faculty salary at UO is about $70K. Dear Colleagues: As a tenured faculty colleague who is currently teaching a course in our School of Law, I’ve experienced firsthand the panic of suddenly…
UO Matters
Apparently there’s some sort of virus going around. Bob Keefer has the news in the Eugene Weekly on what this means for the Artistic Director search etc. Apparently some sort of Track & Field event is also being postponed. No worries about football though, they’re still looking for a $825K…
In a notable departure from our university’s past efforts to hide basic information on how they are spending public funds, their made-up fee for this request is not a prime number:
Pres Schill offers faculty union a pay cut proposal and a threat: take it or suffer the consequences
The short version, from the union:
Executive Summary
The administration wants faculty to agree to a wage cut plan in the event of revenue loss. United Academics leadership has concerns about the proposal and would like to bargain the plan. If UA does not agree to the wage cut plan, the administration intends to either non-renew all 211 Career faculty who are up for renewal this spring or offer them only 0.1 FTE contracts. In order for a wage cut plan for faculty to go into effect, the membership of United Academics would have to vote in favor of the plan.
In a nutshell this plan would put the full cost of any tuition losses or state funding cuts on the faculty and OAs. There is no discussion of an offset for increases in federal funding, such as the $16m UO is getting from the CARES act. There is no discussion of cuts for Johnson Hall’s pet projects.
There is no accountability for the administration’s past decisions to spend down UO’s reserves on an Athlete’s Village for the 2021 Track & Field championships, on utility connections for Hayward field, on the Law School, on continued hidden athletic subsidies, etc, which led to the decrease in reserves and the increase in bond debt.
There is no provision for shared governance oversight of future spending.
The scheme is barely progressive – the cuts start at a very low $40K, and the top rate peaks at $200K, meaning those making say $400K pay the same percentage as those making $200K.
Amusingly, or perhaps I should say incompetently, whoever cooked this scheme up does not understand the difference between average and marginal – so after these cuts, an AVP now making say $199,999 would end up with a higher salary than one making $200,001. Under the middle scenario, the new salaries would be $178,819 and $176,000, or a $2,820 bigger cut for the poor soul who started out $2 ahead. This does not inspire confidence in our VPFA and VPBP’s ability to run our university’s finance and budgeting without supervision.
Here’s the schedule, with 5 scenarios and corresponding cuts, as calculated by the Administration:
The Administration’s full draft proposal is here. The Faculty Union’s full response is below.
OSU President (and Professor of Economics) Ed Ray explains how to manage a budget crisis: Dear OSU faculty, staff and students, I write regarding the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Oregon State University, actions underway in response, and a financial future that remains unclear due to the uncertainty of…
The Duck’s Dana Altman now makes more than 3x as much as OSU’s basketball coach. John Canzano has the news on the 7% cut here. Details on Altman’s most recent raise, which Pres Schill and our Trustees gave him during the 2019 budget crisis, is here. A snippet. This is…
Just kidding, Ralph threw them a few softballs. Then Chairman Chuck Lillis (best known for his role in the 2008 bankruptcy of WaMu) asked Mullens something about the Duck’s magical season, they all laughed and our Board of Trustees voted unanimously for it and for a new media licensing deal…
From what I can tell, Mullens is the only AD employee (except of course Lorraine Davis and the other Jock Box staff) paid out of UO’s E&G (or Education and General) budget bucket. Which means the academic side is on the hook for the $2.5M in retention bonuses Pres Schill…
(Note: updated with info from an always well informed commenter, who also points out that this blog and its commenters sometimes come across as uncaring about the staff and OA’s who keep the university running. She is right, and for my part I resolve to try and do better on that.)
They will still get health benefits – thanks to work by HR. Assuming an average salary of $30,000, this will save UO about $2.2M a quarter, or 1/6 of a Jumbotron. It will be a windfall for the employees, except perhaps the most recent hires and ones who are paid the highest, who would be eligible for other policies, such as key employee insurance. This can help insure all the extremely essential employees a company has. For full-time workers at $15 an hour, instead of $500 or so a week take home, they will get ~$400 in regular unemployment benefits, plus the $600 per week CARES act add-on. Part time workers will do even better in percentage terms.
Of course first Oregon’s Employment Division needs to figure out how to get the checks out. Their COBOL system crashed again this weekend. For context, back on March 6th 1933, the day after his inauguration, FDR closed the entire U.S. banking system in response to bank runs. That week he had the Federal Reserve fly bags of freshly printed currency to banks across the country, and almost all banks were reopened and cashing paychecks by March 15.
President Schill’s message below the break:
Sunday 4/12/2020 update: The recorded version of Friday’s Faculty Union Town Hall is now posted on youtube here:
The Administration’s Town Hall is here. Expect more updates from the union this week on job security, the Administration’s proposed pay cuts, and bargaining, at uauoregon.org.
Late Friday night update: I’m no cheap-ass faculty union treasurer, but apparently the free trial Zoom account was overloaded with viewers, so some people couldn’t see this live. The recorded version will be posted at uauoregon.org as soon as the public relations consultants figure out how to translate all the cuss words into Latin.
Rumor has it that the union leadership will discuss the salary cut proposals that have been floating around – and make it clear that any mandatory cuts must go to the union membership for a vote.
There is no truth to the rumors that your union spent your dues hiring a $253K VP for Strategic Miscommunication and a $150K former TV anchor to moderate this town hall, or that they used consultants to make sure that the union officers have tasteful, academicish zoom backgrounds. Here’s how to watch the low-budget and hopefully more informative Union response to the Administration’s effort, and submit questions:
| Spring Union Meeting | ||||||||
|
||||||||
That said, the $3,600 car stipend wouldn’t buy half my ride: And President Schill is going to let Duck AD Rob Mullens hire still more:
And they’ve got some more real news here. Hadn’t really thought about the rat problem, until now.
4/9/2020: And now U of Louisville. 4/6/2020: That would be Iowa State University, in the Des Moines Register. Here at UO, President Schill has made it very clear that the Ducks can keep any money they save through these sorts of cuts, as well as whatever they get through increased donations.…