As you know, real wages for FAU faculty have been steadily declining for many years now. The reason? During collective bargaining we are repeatedly told there are no recurring dollars to support raises for faculty. Blame is passed on to the state legislature or Board of Governors for not allocating enough money to the university.
Earlier this year, the collective bargaining team for UFF-FAU requested from administration a list of all salaries for both in-unit (all faculty and instructors) and out-of-unit (administrators, staff, police, maintenance, etc) employees at FAU. After nearly four months of inexplicable delay, the data was sent. The results were surprising in that they contradicted the administration’s general line during bargaining that no raises were had at all.
NO RAISES? HARDLY!
The total amount of money spent on Administrative Discretionary Increases (ADI)* from January 2014 to February 2015 was:
Total $ spent on giving Special Pay Increases + Equity Increases to Out-of-Unit members = $ 1,962,641
Total $ spent on giving Special Pay Increases + Equity Increases to In-Unit Faculty = $ 221,058
That’s right, almost 2 million dollars went to Out-of-Unit administrators and employees for these increases! This is despite the UFF-FAU bargaining team repeatedly being told by University Administration that there was NO MONEY FOR RAISES. Just the difference in the money allocated (i.e. the extra $1.7 million or so given to
Out-of-Unit) would have amounted to, by our estimate, something close to a 3% raise for all faculty at FAU.
259 Out-of-Unit folks received “Special Pay Increase” to their base salary (thus recurring) with the average increase for these recipients being 10.62% of their base salary. 49 Out-of-Unit folks received “Equity Increase” to their base salary (also recurring), with the average increase being 11% of base salary.
On the other hand, only 57 In-Unit Faculty members received “Special Pay Increase”, with the average increase for them being 6.68% of their base salary. Only ONE In-Unit Faculty member received an “Equity Increase”, with that faculty member’s increase being 4.64% of base salary.
See the attached Comparative Summary for more details: Comparative Data Summary For the Period Jan 2014 – Feb 2015
Needless to say, such data shows where priorities truly lie with FAU administration. The main mission of a university is its teaching and research. Yet the administration repeatedly neglects to fairly compensate, not to mention reward, a majority of its faculty who consistently produce high quality instruction and research. This is highly unacceptable and not the only thing learned after analyzing the salary data.
Stay tuned for more to come . . . .
Bob Zoeller
UFF-FAU President
*ADI are salary bumps offered to individual employees outside of collective bargaining, per Article 23.6 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement