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Last week, the Board ratified the contract with the full-time faculty union. It’s a three-year contract, as was the contract before it. I was involved in the negotiations for both this one and the one before it, and all I’ll say about that is that the process draws heavily on one’s ability to compartmentalize.
But both the previous contract and the new one include a feature of which I’m proud, and which I’d like to see spread more widely through the industry -- raises were flat dollar figures, rather than percentages.
I’ll use hypothetical numbers to illustrate. Many contracts give everyone a set percentage. So if the lowest-paid members of the unit make $50,000 and the highest paid make $100,000, and everyone gets the same percentage, then the highest paid get twice as large a raise as the lowest paid. At 3 percent, $50,000 would become $51,500, and $100,000 would become $103,000. That means that the folks making $50,000 get raises of $1,500, but the folks making $100,000 get raises of $3,000.
We did it differently. We figured out the number of dollars it would take to raise the pool by x percent, divided it by the number of unit members and gave everyone that. So the lowest paid go from $50,000 to $52,000, and the highest paid go from $100,000 to $102,000. (Again, hypothetical numbers.) That way, the folks on the low end get a higher percentage than the ones on the high end, even though they both get the same dollar increase. In this example, when everyone gets $2,000, the folks on the bottom get 4 percent, and the ones on the top get 2 percent.
It’s like a flat tax, in reverse. It’s as progressive as a flat tax is regressive.
The method is distinct from the amount; in other words, this method could allocate tiny raises, moderate raises or enormous raises. Rather than addressing the amount, it addresses the distribution of the amount.
The underlying assumption behind this method is that the folks on the bottom -- usually those with less seniority -- are in the same housing market as the ones at the top. (If anything, it may be harsher, given that many people at the top of the scale bought their homes decades ago, when they were much cheaper in real terms; some have even paid them off.) By directing a slightly larger share to those on the bottom -- in a way that’s very easy to calculate -- we’re able to spend limited resources where they’re likelier to make the most difference. Everyone gets something, but the felt impact will probably be greater for the folks who get the least.
(To be clear, raises tied to promotions are handled separately. This is just about across-the-board raises.)
The union team and the management team disagreed over many things in the course of discussion, but not really over this. While probably everyone involved would have preferred having more money to divide, the flat-dollar method at least allowed us to recognize the legitimate beef that people at the lower end of the scale have.
Wise and worldly readers everywhere, I offer this idea to anyone who wants to try it. It doesn’t solve institutional budget issues, but it does help the lowest-paid unit members in a really simple way.
