The Empire Strikes Back and It Wants You to Work Harder
Last Thursday afternoon, Western faculty received an
e-mail from an ominously disembodied Provost@wwu.edu. In the interest of responding to “a desire to know more
about the administration’s positions” the e-mail contained a link to the
administration’s “Bargaining News” website, where the administration has posted
its most extensive discussion of bargaining to date. Along with the administration’s commitment to “providing
factual information and dispelling rumors,” there is also an unmistakable note
of new pride at having now found, after more than fourteen months of
bargaining, positions they feel they can sell to faculty.
The administration’s last package proposal on March 26
was indeed a breakthrough. Of the
five significant issues we have been discussing—Faculty Senate, Grievance and
Arbitration, Non-Tenure Track Faculty, Compensation, and Workload—we have
reached a compromise position on the Faculty Senate and we have made some
progress in the area of Grievance and Arbitration with the administration’s
willingness to agree to the principle of Just Cause. We are very close on Non-Tenure Track Faculty, needing only
find a way to ensure that high-performing, long-term non-tenure track faculty
are not replaced solely to save a few dollars. But in the areas of Compensation and Workload we still have
significant bridges to build.
Compensation
The administration’s latest compensation proposal is more
realistic than any of their previous proposals, but it would still leave us
making no significant progress toward the 75th percentile of peer
salaries – a goal that President Morse reiterated in a recent talk before
Bellingham’s City Club. In the
absence of progress toward their own goal, the administration seems
particularly intent to show on their website that their current proposal
outpaces the recent compensation agreement at Eastern Washington University. While a quick glance at the numbers
makes this seem factual, overall it is not accurate. It is true that the administration’s current offer of 4.3%
salary increases in each of the two years of the contract is one tenth of one
percent more each year than in the Eastern settlement. But this does not take into account two
important aspects of the Eastern settlement. The Eastern increases are retroactive to January 1 and
Eastern associate and full professors all received a $500 increase to their
base salary. These increases make
the average total salary increase for associate and full professors at Eastern
approximately 9.3% over the biennium, or about .7% more than what the Western
administration is currently offering.
So the most accurate comparison would probably conclude that the compensation
in the current offer from Western’s administration is similar to the Eastern
contract for assistant professors and somewhat less for associate and full
professors. The administration’s
offer is also .2% less than Eastern’s settlement for non-tenure track
faculty. And for both tenure-track
and non-tenure-track faculty at Western who are in their first year of service,
the increase would be dramatically less, as the Western administration’s
proposal does not provide for 2007-08 increases for those faculty. Overall, the current administration
proposal is close to, but still less than the Eastern settlement.
But if we were to merely meet or slightly exceed the
salary increases at Eastern, both bargaining teams will have failed. Neither the faculty nor the
administration at Western has ever thought of Eastern as an appropriate
comparison. Right now our average
salaries are only about two thousand dollars a year above those at Eastern. Given our faculty’s scholarly
productivity, the opportunities we provide for our students, and our number two
ranking among western regional comprehensive institutions, simply keeping pace
with Eastern is a wholly unacceptable goal. Eastern is not on the list of peer institutions designated
by our administration and on no other issue have we sought to compare ourselves
with Eastern. Why should we make
such comparisons when it comes to salary increases? And lest we forget, it is also much more expensive to live
in Bellingham than it is to live in Cheney. Salaries comparable to Eastern will not solve our
recruitment problems or help us to retain the kind of faculty necessary to
continue our tradition of educational excellence.
After years of neglect, Western’s salaries are
substantially out of line with those at institutions with which we actually
compete for faculty and students and the repercussions are just beginning to be
felt. As President Morse pointed
out when the 2007-09 budget was announced, Western received the biggest
percentage increase of any university in the state. Western must invest some of this money in its faculty if we
are to continue moving toward the university vision to be “the premier public
comprehensive university in the country.”
One of the things that does not appear on the
administration’s bargaining website is the UFWW’s current compensation
proposal. We propose an 8%
increase for all faculty upon signing the contract, a 5% increase at the
beginning of fall quarter in 2008, and a 5% increase beginning in the winter
quarter of 2009. This is a
significant compromise from our previous position, as it would not bring us to
President Morse’s modest 75th percentile goal. Moreover, it is a proposal that
is eminently reasonable in the framework of Western’s 2007-09 budget. Our current proposal for
across-the-board increases for all faculty would use a little more than $3.5
million of the $9.7 million discretionary dollars that Western has in its
current budget. That is an
investment of a little more than 36% of the discretionary money to strengthen
the most important part of the university. In fact, this percentage is in line with the proportion of
the total university budget that has, until recent years, been dedicated to
instructional salaries. Given both
the faculty’s primary importance to the mission of the institution and the
significant investment that Western has made in administration over the past
ten years, our current proposal looks both modest and prudent.
Workload
Perhaps the most troubling part of the administration’s
current proposal is their new stance on workload. For the past year the administration bargaining team has
been telling us that the administration has no intention of increasing faculty
teaching loads, but they have been unwilling to make that promise in the
contract. Now they want to write
into the contract that there will be no “unreasonable” increases in teaching
load. So the administration
bargaining team has moved from verbal assurances that teaching load will not
increase to a written promise that workloads will increase within the two-year
span of this contract, just not to a level that the administration finds
unreasonable. We cannot see this
as anything but a step backward, not just for our contract negotiations but
also for the university.
On this issue too, the administration has tried to muddy
the waters by highlighting on its bargaining website passages from other
contracts that appear to allow for increases in workload, or at least leave
decisions about workload in the hands of administrators. But a careful read of all of these
contracts reveals a recognition of the importance of balancing workload issues
against the educational mission of the university and the needs of faculty and
academic units. None of the
contract proposals offered by our administration reflect a similar recognition.
What the administration bargaining
team does not seem to understand
is that even slight increases to the workload of an already overworked
faculty threatens our ability to carry out the stated goals of the institution. In fact, Western’s commitment to “engaged
excellence” would seem to suggest that the administration should be looking for
ways to reduce faculty teaching load.
The ability of faculty to develop innovative teaching methods and
provide opportunities for student scholarship, community learning, and active
engagement in the learning process is directly related to the number of classes
we teach and the number of students in those classes. The amount and quality of the research we do — the research
that nourishes our teaching, the research called for in the recently minted
strategic plan — is directly related to our teaching load. It seems unlikely that the faculty will
be able to meet these ever higher scholarship expectations, including the
expectation to secure external funding for our work, in the context of
increasing teaching responsibilities.
Perhaps most importantly, increasing teaching loads would diminish many
of the features of Western that attract our fine students. Many of our best students will confirm
that they chose Western because we provide direct, personal access to top
quality faculty both in and out of the classroom. In fact, much of our most important teaching and advising
happens outside of the classroom where we foster specialized research skills,
provide detailed and interactive feedback on writing, and advise our students
on their educational and professional trajectories. All of these require significant amounts of time outside of
the classroom but are absolutely key to the “Western experience.” We cannot agree to a contract that does
not hold our teaching at current levels.
We understand the administration’s desire to retain some
flexibility over faculty teaching loads and we are mindful of the possibility
that adjustments to workloads might be a convenient way for the administration
to compensate for the things they believe they are giving up in a new
contract. But, in the interest of
protecting the integrity of the institution, we cannot sign a contract that
heaps more work on those charged with carrying out the educational mission of
the university. Even if what the
current administration feels are reasonable increases in workload are not
completely discordant with the needs of our students and faculty, there is no
reason to believe that the definition of what is a reasonable will be shared by
the administration that will take over at the helm of the university in just a
few months.
Since
receiving the latest proposal from the administration, the UFWW bargaining team
has been hard at work to develop counterproposals that recognize the stated
goals of the administration and protect both the faculty and the quality of the
institution. After fourteen months
of active negotiations, including six full days with the mediator assigned by
the state’s Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC), the UFWW bargaining
team is pleased to have made good agreements on some key issues related to
faculty life. But we also
recognize that we have come too far to now make settlements on remaining issues
that are inconsistent with the mission of the university.
The
two bargaining teams meet again with the PERC mediator on April 15 and 16.