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from
Faculty Issues and Concerns listserve
November 17, 2005:
Subject: Loyal Faculty campaign profiled in AAUP'S FACULTY MATTERS
National AAUP's bi-annual newsletter, FACULTY MATTERS, features an article about
the UW chapter's Loyal Faculty campaign. FACULTY MATTERS should arrive in
members' mailboxes this week. It can be found online at:
http://www.aaup.org/Faculty-Org/asc/05/FacMatters05.pdf
The article follows:
CHAPTER MOUNTS "LOYAL FACULTY" CAMPAIGN
Many long-term faculty members at the University of Washington can look forward
to pay raises thanks to the efforts of the UW AAUP chapter. Salary compression
at the institution has been worsening since the 1980s, according to chapter
leaders, and salaries of long-term faculty members stagnated as available salary
funds were directed to new hires and counter offers.
"The university pays market rate when it hires, but after that, often the only
way to get an above-inflation raise is to become a department chair or
administrator or threaten to leave. Those faculty who stay longest fall furthest
behind," says James Gregory, a professor of history at the university and the
chapter's former president.
In summer 2004, the chapter decided to mount a campaign to get the
administration to address the issue. The first step was to describe the
situation; believing that "compression" was too abstract a term, chapter leaders
referred to the problem as the "loyal faculty salary penalty." They issued a
report, titled Shortchanging the Loyal Faculty, which demonstrated that senior
faculty members in many departments suffered from severe salary stagnation.
Using money from the chapter treasury along with donations from members, the
chapter printed 3,000 copies of the report and distributed it widely among
faculty, administrators, and board members.
The chapter followed up by scheduling meetings with leaders of the university's
faculty senate and then with the president and provost. They showed case studies
of particular departments, listing the salaries of each full professor along
with years of service and indications of scholarly productivity. The data showed
that time served, and not indicators of merit, was the best predictor of
salary--an inverse predictor. The longer faculty served, the further their
salaries fell behind.
UW president Mark Emmert was persuaded by the data, and the 2005-06 academic
year budget allocated $2 million to start addressing the problem. It is to be
the first of several such allocations, Emmert told faculty.
"We welcome this first step, although a real solution to the loyal faculty
penalty must address problems in the structure of UW's policies and practices of
faculty compensation," says AAUP chapter president Kathleen O'Neill, a professor
of law.
"This is also a lesson in university governance," O'Neill adds. "We need to set
agendas and pursue them vigorously."
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University
of Washington chapter