Archive for the ‘Compensation’ Category
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011
This figure (click to enlarge) represents the real and nominal changes in the salary of a UW System employee. This does not include total compensation such as health insurance, costs of leave benefits, etc.
However, it does include reductions in salary due to higher co-pays for insurance and WRS. It also includes the reductions of salary due to furlough and the addition of 3% when the furloughs ended. I do not project the loss of real income in 2012 due to inflation and no increase in salary.
Posted in Compensation, State worker benefits, The University Budget, The University System | No Comments »
Monday, October 3rd, 2011
Do UW employees need a representative organization in addition to the existing governance institutions? What would be the primary objectives of the organization? How would this organization evolve?
A group of faculty and staff met last Saturday afternoon to discuss these questions. The individuals represented a reasonable cross-section of academic staff and faculty (in length of service) and most of the employee organizations such as PROFS, UFAS and academic staff governance groups. The meeting was organized by Wisconsin University Union (WUU) for the purpose of assessing interest in a campus-wide organization and figuring out what that organization would do.
There was a unanimous opinion that an employee organization is needed. Many of the discussion participants were members/leaders of the staff and faculty governance organizations and spoke to the limitations of those organizations. Academic staff discussed the inability of the Academic Staff Assembly to address most of the major issues facing the staff e.g. layoffs, promotions, pay inequities. And noted the low level of participation and interaction with those they purport to represent. Faculty noted that the Senate failed to take a strong position on the Public Authority proposal until it was effectively dead. Given the structural ties between the Faculty Senate and PROFS, that organization is often hamstrung from positions that most members of PROFS endorse. (more…)
Posted in Collective bargaining, Compensation, Shared governance, State worker benefits | 1 Comment »
Monday, July 18th, 2011
On June 15, 2011, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled to lift Judge Sumi’s injunction on the Budget Repair Bill giving the state the go-ahead to implement the bill as law. During the protests of February through May, people came together in attempt to stop the bill from becoming law – but now it is law and that’s that. In the media, I didn’t see any uproar, or questioning of this new law’s impact, or calls to know what’s in store for us in the future — I found just two (1, 2) recent articles which recounted the push-back and feelings of solidarity of the protests and emphasized the need to remember these feelings and our (i.e. public employees) connections to each other. Both articles, however, treated the fight for our collective bargaining rights as being over — we should look back on our solidarity and our fight and know that even though we “lost,” we tried our darnedest. But the assault isn’t over — it’s just beginning. Things are going to change and people’s lives are going to be affected – we just don’t know exactly how or when. (more…)
Posted in Collective bargaining, College costs, Compensation, Graduate student affairs, State worker benefits, State-University Relations, The UW-Madison Campus | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, July 13th, 2011
It is easy — indeed, it is natural after a series of crises to mistake a momentary calm for a return to normalcy. We, of course, want the threats to subside and to return to the way things once were which, even if they weren’t quite perfect, were familiar.
In that vein, we’d like to look back and regard the events of last semester as an aberration and not indicative of the life we live now or how we will live in the future. We’d rather not consider all of the facts and face the new reality: that we no longer know what life will be like in the future other than that it will probably be worse in some distinct but as of yet, unknown, ways. But “the facts get in the way” of our attempts to ignore our new and discomforting reality. (more…)
Posted in Collective bargaining, Compensation, State worker benefits, State-University Relations, The University Budget, The UW-Madison Campus | 6 Comments »
Friday, June 24th, 2011
On Thursday, UW System notified all UW employee organizations that it would stop collecting dues effective in August. This will affect PROFS, ASPRO, WUU, and the Council for Supervisory Non-Classified Staff as well as the unions (AFSCME, TAA, etc.). (Note: UW Madison administration was not notified of this action until after the fact.)
While it had been anticipated that the state would end the deduction for the unions, the end of the deduction for organizations that do not engage in collective bargaining comes as a surprise. In Walker’s initial budget, the prohibiting language was limited to “labor organizations” which are defined as “an organization that engages in collective bargaining.” However, when the bill was amended in Joint Finance a more expansive amendment was added that prohibited dues deduction for any employee organization other than those representing public safety employees. (more…)
Posted in Collective bargaining, Compensation, State worker benefits, State-University Relations, The University System | No Comments »
Monday, May 9th, 2011
Some of the recent statements for support for NBP come from stars among our faculty. It is no secret that the major reason to seek more flexibility is to meet the challenges in keeping the stars from moving to greener pastures. The competitive compensation plans to stay in the market for stars puts an upward pressure on the salaries of stars, while simultaneously exerting a downward pressure on the salaries of others, particularly exacerbated when you bring in equity considerations.
Let us not forget that while excellence and scholarship among our stars is beyond question, there is large segment among us who are silently sifting and winnowing for truth outside the limelight, working on unpopular ideas. It is the freedom to pursue such efforts that our tenure is supposed to guarantee. (more…)
Posted in Compensation, State-University Relations, The University Budget, The University System, The UW-Madison Campus | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
Prof. Sara Goldrick-Rab’s blog, the Education Optimists, has been a goldmine of thoughtful and thorough deconstructions of the Public Authority proposal, and she has posed a number of pointed questions about the NBP, many of which have gone more or less unanswered by NBP proponents. Yesterday, she posed a new question:
What I am questioning is whether raising faculty salaries is the most cost-effective way to achieve the goal of retaining talent and whether efforts to raise faculty salaries should be a driving force behind the New Badger Partnership.
She then goes on to examine in some detail the role of absolute salary relative to other factors in faculty retention: (more…)
Posted in Compensation, Retention, State-University Relations, The University Budget, The UW-Madison Campus | 8 Comments »
Saturday, April 23rd, 2011
The politics of public authority for UW-Madison seem to be unraveling. People talking to key Republican lawmakers and staffers are hearing things like “non-starter” and “no way”. The Chancellor has ginned up a lot of support on campus and in Madison, but statewide politics will almost certainly kill this proposal.
Still, this deal is a monster and monsters don’t die so easy. Let me hand you a silver bullet for your pistol in case you meet this one in a dark alley: This deal with Walker has been sold by appeal to vague flexibilities. The details we do know, in fact, are mostly serious downsides, and many people aren’t even aware of them. Consider the budget implications of these two tidbits that I’ve picked up talking to people in the know: (more…)
Posted in Compensation, Shared governance, State-University Relations, The University Budget, The University System, The UW-Madison Campus | 2 Comments »
Saturday, March 5th, 2011
On February 11, Scott Walker unveiled his “budget repair bill”, which calls for the elimination of collective bargaining rights by unionized public employees and imposes immediate and drastic cuts in take-home pay for public workers by requiring new employee contributions to health and pension benefits. (more…)
Posted in Compensation, State worker benefits, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
