How Much are YOU Underpaid?

President Clif Smart recently, while discussing an across the board 2 percent raise, stated that raising salaries “is a priority for our Board and for me and my administration”.[1]  President Smart is, of course, not the first MSU President to make similar statements.  Clearly, continued 2 percent raises will simply perpetuate the problem.  That leads to the question in the title of this blog:  How much are you underpaid?

MSU identifies 11 benchmark institutions in its current long-range plan.[2] The following data compares MSU faculty by rank to these benchmark institutions.  As noted on the President’s web page: “This set of institutions is similar to Missouri State University-Springfield in many respects (e.g., student headcount, level and span of degree programs), but possesses characteristics and accomplishes outcomes that we aspire to achieve.”  How much are you underpaid over the past 14 years relative to pay at these benchmark institutions?[3]

Here is the data for Full Professors.[4]  First, let’s look at MSU versus three universities that are geographically close to us.

Notice that MSU professor salaries are essentially the same in the 98-99 academic year compared to the benchmark universities, especially for Wichita State and Illinois State.  However, the disparity between MSU and these benchmark institutions has grown dramatically over time including during the last two years..  The next graph shows MSU Professor Salaries vs. the average salary at all 11 benchmark institutions and shows a similar relationship.

In the last year listed AY 11-12, the difference in salaries is $14,220.  Don’t forget, as the University has been quick to tell us over the years, that the value of our benefits must be included to fully calculate faculty total compensation:

Notice that we see the same pattern here as with salaries.  The value of benefits at MSU is similar to our benchmark institutions in AY 98-99, with an ever increasing disparity over time.  In the last AY, which for benefits is AY 10-11, the difference in benefits equals $4,688.

How much in $$ have YOU lost?

In current dollars, the lost salary from an MSU full professor not being paid her/his worth (i.e., the average for MSU benchmark universities) over the last 14 years equals:

$172,493 (salary) + $41,717 (benefits) = $214,210

Data for each of the remaining ranks at MSU are included below to show faculty just how far the board and President Smart have to go to fulfill their pledge.  Recall that the value of benefits is the same for all employees.

Associate Professors

In the last year listed AY 11-12, the difference in salaries is $7,916. 

In current dollars, the lost salary from an MSU associate professor not being paid her/his worth (i.e., the average for MSU benchmark universities) over the last 14 years equals:  $114, 893 (salary) + $41,717 (benefits) = $156,610

Assistant Professors

 

In the last year listed AY 11-12, the difference in salaries is $4,334. 

In current dollars, the lost salary from an MSU associate professor not being paid her/his worth (i.e., the average for MSU benchmark universities) over the last 14 years equals:  $66, 725 (salary) + $41,717 (benefits) = $108, 442

Instructors

Note: The above data combines the data for Instructors and Lecturers for MSU in the years that MSU had both.

In the last year listed AY 11-12, the difference in salaries is $7,061. 

In current dollars, the lost salary from an MSU Instructor not being paid her/his worth (i.e., the average for MSU benchmark universities) over the last 14 years equals: 

 

$89,817 (salary) + $41,717 (benefits) = $131,534

What YOU can do to change being UNDERPAID?

Join MSU Faculty Association and fight to correct these inequities.

The data suggests that there are two main causes of the low faculty salaries at MSU.  First, over this time period the MSU administration has chosen to invest available budget dollars into other, non-academic, areas of the university including administration and professional (non-academic) staff.  In fact, while the numbers of ranked faculty have remained constant at MSU since 1993, even as student enrollment has increased, the number of administrators has increased by 31 percent and the numbers of non-academic professional staff have increased by 273 percent.  As a percentage of total FTE employees on campus faculty, both ranked and unranked, have fallen from 45.6% of all FTE in 1993 to 35.9 percent in 2010.  See the Faculty Senate staffing report in 2010 for a full picture of what has happened in these areas over time.[5]

Second, Missouri funding of higher education has decreased substantially in the recent past while at the same time the state has placed a soft cap on tuition increases for public universities and colleges. 

How would YOU joining the MSU Faculty Association help with these problems?

The MSU Faculty Association has a two-pronged strategy for dealing with the salary inequities borne by all faculty members at MSU.  The immediate goal of the MSU Faculty Association is to achieve collective bargaining status.  That is, the MSU Faculty Association desires to represent all full time faculty in bargaining an equitable, legally enforceable contract over the terms and working conditions of faculty employment at MSU.  In previous posts on this blog, we have pointed out the many advantages of such collective bargaining.  Those benefits include both increases in salaries and, especially relevant, improvements in the allocation of resources on campus.  Speaking with a collective voice will increase the power that faculty collectively have on a wide range of issues on campus.

Notice that achieving collective bargaining on campus is a several step process that has been ongoing for the past 2 years.  We have several steps to go before we can achieve the goal.  What we need from you is more faculty who are willing to help in our efforts to get a collective bargaining contract.  Hence, joining MSU Faculty Association is just the first step.  We also need you to become active, primarily by talking to your colleagues.  Formally, we need to have a card campaign where we ask faculty to sign a card saying anonymously that they desire the MSU Faculty Association to represent them in collective bargaining.  A successful card campaign that collects enough signatures validated by a neutral third party like the League of Women Voters will then trigger an election.  A simple majority of full time faculty on campus must then vote in the election for the MSU Faculty Association to represent them to then achieve the goal of collective bargaining.

The longer term strategy, still being developed, once collective bargaining is attained is to also use our collective voice externally within the state.  The obvious method is via lobbying the legislature and governor of the state, with help from the Missouri NEA and their already well developed lobbying efforts.  However, we can also partner with other entities outside of MSU including other collective faculty voices at other Missouri public universities and colleges.  We have an important message to send to our fellow citizens in the state – investments in higher education are crucial to Missouri’s economic health.

We encourage all faculty to join with us in achieving these goals.

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[1] http://news.missouristate.edu/2013/06/21/fy14budget/

[2] http://www.missouristate.edu/president/benchmark.htm

[3] Benchmark Institutions include Illinois State, Wichita State, Northern Iowa, Ball State, Grand Valley State, James Madison, Louisiana Tech, University of Montana, Texas Arlington, Towson, and UNC Charlotte.

[4] All data is self-reported by each university via the U.S. Department of Education IPEDS system.

[5] http://courses.missouristate.edu/ReedOlsen/msufa/2010BPreport.pdf

MSU Faculty Association Social Event for all MSU Faculty

To all MSU Faculty:

You are cordially invited to attend a social event hosted by the MSU Faculty Association on May 11, 2013.  This event, which will begin with a brief general membership meeting, will take place from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Hilton Garden Inn, 4155 South Nature Center Way, Springfield, MO; phone: (417) 875-8853.  Cocktails will be served, one free beverage—alcohol or soft drink—will be provided along with a variety of hors d’oeuvres. Additionally, there will be a cash bar.  MSU faculty who are not members of the MSU Faculty Association are invited to attend.  So, please come and enjoy your colleagues in this special off-campus event.  Please RSVP to Reed Olsen (rno174f@gmail.com).

Sincerely,

Executive Committee of the MSU Faculty Association

Reed Olsen, President
John Satzinger, Vice President
Mary Ann Jennings, Treasurer
David Lutz, Secretary
Cameron Wickham, Member at Large

Benefits of Unionization

The original Faculty Senate Report on Unionization concludes unanimously that the benefits of unionizations outweighed the costs (see the link to the right).  The report identifies the following benefits:

1.     Faculty under no obligation to join the union or pay dues; however, all those in the collective bargaining unit—even those who don’t join the union—may vote on bargained contracts (Note: the decision on which faculty members can vote on bargained contracts is actually reserved for union members. For example the unions in Springfield have in their bylaws that you must be a member to vote.)

 

2.     Collective bargaining for salaries, intellectual property rights, workload

3.     Faculty decide the composition of the bargaining unit and issues to be negotiated 

4.     Collective bargaining for employment policies, shared governance, promotion & compensation policies

5.     Collective bargaining agreements legally binding for both parties, making that contract enforceable

6.     Experienced negotiators whose job it is to negotiate (complementing the MSU faculty who rotate into leadership positions)

7.     National databases accessible (sic) for issues as they emerge affecting MSU faculty; helps faculty track university conditions over time and match changes at MSU with national trends  

8.     Knowledge of university system for information gathering (what information is necessary, what form, where it is, persistence in accessing it) • Legal counsel for professional issues

9.     Reduced rate for personal counsel 

10.  Two million dollar liability insurance for faculty (note: now four million dollars).

11.  Voice in public policy—linking MSU faculty to the efforts of professional lobbyists on behalf of faculty 

12.  Salary differential between union/non-union universities (see Appendix III)

13.  Consulting source for local issues—access to national trends

14.  In periods of institutional transition or times of crisis, union provides a stronger faculty voice

The purpose of this post is to inform you of your benefits under a collective bargaining agreement, focusing primarily on three issues, based on new evidence and new academic studies.

Students and Universities Benefit from Faculty Unionizing

Number 11 on the list above is a notation that the university is likely to benefit from lobbying efforts provided by MSU FA affiliation with our national union--NEA in Washington, D.C. and state affiliation with MNEA in Jefferson City.  In addition, a new study detailed recently published by the Chronicle of Higher Education shows that:

An unusual new study of the effects of faculty unionization on public universities—rather than on just faculty members themselves—reaches the controversial conclusion that such institutions generally become more efficient and effective when their professors form collective-bargaining units (emphasis added).

How exactly does unionization benefit the university and, by extension, its students?  “Unionization contributes to lower budgets, higher graduation rates, and a greater number of degrees and completions," asserts the author in the Chronicle article.

These positive results primarily come about because unionized Universities spend 2 to 3 percent more of their budget on instruction and less on administration.  As a result, student success rate, “as measured by the share of students who graduate within six years, earn degrees, or complete some other academic program” improves at unionized Universities.

Of course, improving funding for the core mission of MSU, as noted in an earlier post to this blog, is one of the major goals of the MSU Faculty Association as is improving student learning and success.

Faculty also Benefit from Unionizing

You will notice that a number of the “Pros” listed above speak directly to how faculty benefit from unionizing.  A recent academic paper, also highlighted in a Chronicle of Higher Education article, further provides evidence on exactly how faculty benefit.

When faculty members discuss unionizing, the debate tends to revolve around the question of whether so banding together gives them more say over their college's affairs or actually leaves them worse off, by hurting their ability to work cooperatively with their institution's administration. A new study of public four-year colleges concludes that unionizing appears to give faculty members considerably more clout in some key areas and does not seem to do them much harm (emphasis added).

That is, unionizing either improves the faculty position on campus or has no negative impact.  In what areas, exactly, are improvements found?  Faculty influence improves the following:

·        Faculty Salary Scales

·        Individual Faculty Salaries

·        Appointments of Academic Department Heads

·        Appointments of members of University committees

·        The Institution’s Curriculum

·        Faculty Teaching Loads

Interestingly, the Chronicle article also discusses concerns voiced by many skeptics of unionizing in higher education including that faculty unions have limited power due to their inability to strike; unions create both an adversarial relationship with the administration and a faculty less willing to be involved in shared governance.  Many of these concerns were also listed as “cons” in the MSU Faculty Senate report referenced above. The authors’ of the study “did not find anything in their study results to affirm such fears and criticisms.”

Updated Data on Faculty Salaries between Unionized and Non-Unionized Universities

The Faculty Senate Report on Unionization included data on salary differentials between faculty by discipline at unionized and non-unionized universities.  That data was from academic year 2008-2009.  Included in this link is an update from the same source for academic year 2011-2012 (the full report is in a link to the right).  Note that these are differences in means by discipline and as the table below illustrates, some disciplines have higher means on unionized as compared to non-unionized universities while for a few disciplines just the opposite is true.  Overall, however, unionized faculty have average salaries that are $2,668 (3.65%) higher than non-unionized faculty. 

Interested readers should note that there is a large and diverse set of published literature that addresses the impact that unionization has on average faculty salaries at an institution.  In addition to discipline, other variables found to have an impact on results include cost of living, rank, and state specific effects.  Although that literature often finds positive impacts of unionization on faculty salaries controlling for these other factors, such is not always the case.  For a discussion see the linked Chronicle of Higher Education report.

Report on Informational Meeting Held 2/28/2013

The main purpose of today’s blog post is to report on our informational meeting held for faculty on 2/28.

Let me start by saying that the weather, both the fact that the meeting had to be postponed and the fact that the weather the day of the meeting was a bit poor, tended to reduce attendance at the meeting.  That is unfortunate but not in our control.  The attendance at the meeting was about 25 people, including NEA staff and faculty members who were presenting at the meeting.  That made for a small group but we had quite a good presentation and a spirited question and answer period at the end of the presentation.  The powerpoint slides are linked for interested faculty to examine in the links at the right.

In addition to the Q&A, the presentation included four main areas:

·        Background of the MSU Faculty Association

o   The discussion here focused on the history over the past several years leading up to the MSU Faculty Association, including the report to the Faculty Senate in Fall of 2010 referenced in the links to the right.

o   The bottom line of the report was a unanimous recommendation from the Ad Hoc Committee investigating unionizing that the advantages of unionizing outweighed the disadvantages.

·        Statistics from the Listening Campaign: What did Faculty actually say?

o   One-on-one visits with individual faculty by union members (faculty) asking both: (1) what are your concerns in your job and (2) What is your opinion of MSU faculty joining together to negotiate a binding collective bargaining contract with MSU?

o   Approximately 20% of all full-time faculty at MSU have been visited to date.

o   Top Concerns included: (1) Faculty shared governance (70% of interviewed with that concern), (2) Increase salaries (66%), Better University Administration (56%).  The full list is available in the presentation.

o   With respect to the question about MSU faculty joining together the results showed 76% of respondents with a positive opinion, 6% with a negative opinion, and 22% who did not know enough.  Note: Some faculty answered both positive/negative and “don’t know enough”, so the totals do not add to 100%.

·        What are the Benefits of Unionization and Collective Bargaining?

o   The main benefit is an enforceable contract that cannot be unilaterally changed by the either party.  Note: the Faculty Handbook is not an enforceable contract but could become so via collective bargaining.  See the Faculty Senate Report on Unionization for more discussion.

o   Other benefits include: Due process, fairness, mutual accountability, contracts tailored to our campus.

o   Collective Bargaining in Missouri legally requires good faith bargaining by both parties.

o   Common Elements of Faculty Collective Bargaining Agreements

·        Employee rights, salary and benefits, tenure and promotion, workload, academic freedom, grievance procedures, intellectual property, sabbaticals, merit pay.

·        Next Steps – What is the MSU FA going to do going forward?

o   Continue Listening campaign

o   Build membership and support

o   How can you get involved?

·        Participate in the listening campaign – contact an MSU Faculty Association member/officer to have a visit from a member. 

·        You can also help by talking to your colleagues.  We are interested in having small meetings with faculty from different departments/colleges as well.

·        Join MSU Faculty Association (there is a Spring special.  Join now and pay no dues until September.)

·        Serve on MSU FA committees.

·       Become an MSU FA leader.

Information from the Question and Answer Session

The following includes a selection of some of the questions and answers from the Q&A session but does not include all of the discussion.

Q:        How were the 20% of the faculty selected for the listening campaign?

A:         During and immediately after the report to the Faculty Senate in the Fall of 2010, members of the Ad Hoc Unionizing FS Committee received emails from interested faculty members.  These faculty formed the basis of the original contact list.  Thereafter, the list was expanded, mostly randomly, to include all colleges/departments.  The goal is to eventually talk to as many faculty as possible.

Q:        What steps are necessary for the union to gain recognition from the university? How many members are needed?

A:         No specific number of members in the MSU Faculty Association is required although membership is necessary for a successful organizing campaign.  One of the purposes of the listening campaign is to determine interest and support for the faculty.  As you can see, to date we have very positive results.  If a third to half of all faculty indicate support then we can move to a card campaign. 

Q:        What is a card campaign?

A:         A card campaign is where faculty are asked to sign a card.  A signature would indicate that the faculty member wishes for the MSU Faculty Association to be their exclusive representatives for collective bargaining.  Faculty signatures from the card campaign must be certified by a neutral third party (e.g., League of Women Voters) but are anonymous to the MSU administration.

Q:        What happens after a successful card campaign?

A:         For private employee unions in Missouri, a state agency would oversee an election of all faculty for the union to represent employees.  For public employee unions in Missouri no specific procedure is in place to secure the union the right to exclusively represent faculty at MSU.  Recent court cases suggest that the card campaign itself might be enough to secure the right to exclusive representation although an election may also be necessary.

Q:        Even if faculty vote for Collective Bargaining, why would an employer (MSU in particular) be obligated to bargain with the union?

A:         A 2007 Missouri Supreme Court ruling gave public employees the right to collective bargaining based upon the state constitution.  A series of Missouri Supreme Court cases since 2007 have found both that public employers must have a process in place to recognize unions and must also bargain in good faith.  FYI, if employers refuse to have a process (an election) in place to recognize a union, then the MO Supreme Court has found that a card campaign will be substituted for that process.  Note: Bargaining in “good faith” is commonly interpreted by the courts as parties being willing to make progress towards a contract.

Q:        Who is eligible to sign a card and/or vote in an election for exclusive representation?

A:         All full-time faculty at MSU Springfield.  Other groups, such as per course faculty and graduate students normally will organize separately.  Often times the impetus for organizing on a college campus comes from one of these groups rather than the full-time faculty.

Q:        Administrations come and go and there is good reason to have agreements like CB for consistency.  But there are state legislative issues that add a lot to our problems. How do we organize without upsetting the state legislature and thereby making it even worse for us?

A:         The NEA has effective national and state lobbyists to help with such issues, including funding higher education.  For example, the Missouri NEA helped the MSU Faculty Association to lobby Governor Nixon on MSU board appointments, including submitting names of potential Board members and for a general philosophy that would result in board members that had more positive attitudes toward faculty.  A refusal by the legislature to act on some issues, however, may sometimes be positive (e.g., as discussed above, successful card campaigns may actually substitute for an election for exclusive representation.)

Q:        A fairly long and detailed question asking generally about whether the national NEA will over-ride the local chapter (MSU faculty) on issues.  The basis for the question was an understanding that MSU faculty would tend to have a better grasp of a large number of issues than the state or national NEA.  How does the NEA interact with the faculty locally and how will we be allowed to decide such issues locally?

A:         The contract that is negotiated as part of the collective bargaining process is between the local faculty represented by the MSU Faculty Association and the university.  The NEA is not directly involved in this bargaining, although they do provide support including training, advice on bargaining and access to a national database of higher education contracts at other universities. Second, a Collective Bargaining Agreement does not cover everything.  For example, issues regarding curriculum are rarely part of a collective bargaining agreement.  Faculty control the MSU Faculty Association negotiating team and what the union wants to go into the CB agreement.  Finally, the final enforceable contract must be ratified by the faculty.

Q:        Public employee unions in Missouri cannot strike, so where would the bargaining strength of a MSU union come from even if the faculty did support unionization?

A:         Most importantly, the strength of the union comes primarily from the collective action of the faculty.  MSU faculty collectively have an enormous amount of power at MSU both because faculty have tenure and because they are the primary providers of MSU’s product, education of students.  Also important is that the collective bargaining process helps the faculty through the MSU Faculty Association to build a productive relationship with the administration, which also gets things that it wants in the CB agreement.

Q:        Is Missouri now/in the future a right to work state?  The implication of the question was how Missouri being or becoming a right to work state would affect collective bargaining in the state.

A:         The answer started out with what it means to be a “right to work” state.  In a right to work state non-union members cannot be forced via a collective bargaining agreement to pay either union dues or a portion of “union dues”, usually referred to as a “fair-share” to help defray negotiation and enforcement costs.

No, Missouri is not a right to work state.  There have been past attempts for to pass right to work legislation in Missouri, which have always failed.  There is no legislative action currently ongoing to become a right to work state.  Although this does mean that collective bargaining contracts in Missouri may have “fair share” clauses (see above) in contracts the NEA does not include such clauses in their contracts.  Hence, non-union faculty at MSU would pay no dues or any “fair share” portion of dues.

Informational Meeting Postponed until 2/28

In the previous blog post, I noted an informational meeting for all MSU Faculty Members to report the results of our listening survey of faculty.  This meeting was scheduled for 2/21 (tomorrow) but it now appears that we will have bad weather periods of snow tonight and tomorrow morning followed by freezing rain tomorrow afternoon.

As a result of the anticipated bad weather, we are rescheduling the meeting for 2/28, same time and place.  The original post is recreated below with the updated date.

Informational Meeting for All MSU Faculty Members

To the right, you will notice a link for a flyer regarding our upcoming meeting to report the results of the MSUFA one-on-one listening survey of faculty.  This has been a time-consuming and labor intensive activity and is far from done.  Let me summarize the information on the flyer:

·       All MSU Faculty are invited to an information meeting about our listening survey and the MSU Faculty Association.

·       Date/Time: February 28, 2013 @ 3:30 to 5 pm.

·       Place: University Heights Baptist Church, 1010 South National Avenue (on the SE corner of National and Grand) just south of the Educational Community Credit Union. Come in the Grand Street door and you will be directed to the meeting room.

We will have a panel of speakers, who will present the finding from the listening survey including both MSU Faculty Association members and representatives of the Missouri NEA.  You are cordially invited to come and learn what your colleagues view as the major concerns they have about their jobs at MSU and what they think about collective bargaining at MSU.

There will be a Question and Answer session and light refreshments will be served.  Please come and join us as we discuss the future of MSU.

Informational Meeting for all MSU Faculty Members

I have two issues to discuss in today’s blog post.  First, I wanted to do a follow-up to my last blog post regarding the state of the MSU budget.  I think it safe to say that the budget situation has improved in the past several months, which is certainly good news.  Second, I am happy to announce that the MSU Faculty Association is finally ready to give an intermediate report in a public meeting for all MSU Faculty members regarding our listening campaign over the past 6 months.

MSU’s and Missouri’s Budget

First, let me briefly note the very positive news about the budget and tax receipts in the state of Missouri.  Governor Nixon noted those positive at a news conference he held this past Monday a summary of which you can read at:

http://politicmo.com/2013/02/05/nixon-releases-funds-for-higher-education-spending/

To summarize:

1.     The State general revenue fund is up currently over the past fiscal year by 18.5%.  Income tax collections, which are the largest source of tax collections, are up 6.1% for the current fiscal year and continue to show improvement each month.

2.     Gov. Nixon announced that he would release the ~ $8.5M of withholding from the current FY budget in higher education.  Of this, $7.1M is to go to four year colleges including MSU.  This is an announcement that the current FY higher education budget will be fully funded, which has been extremely rare in the recent past.

3.     At his recent State of the State address, Gov. Nixon released his budget for the next fiscal year, which has built in an approximately 4% increase in funding for higher education with, as I understand, some possibility that performance funding will be applied for that budget year.

These announcements and, especially, the trend in tax collections for Missouri, are extremely positive.  If acted upon by the legislature, the increase in state funding for higher education will be the first in Missouri since the beginning of the recent financial crisis.

There remain, of course, important concerns on campus at MSU regarding budgetary priorities.  Most importantly, it remains the case that the core mission of MSU, defined to include academics (instruction), research, and public service remains underfunded in the MSU budget.  Notwithstanding President Smart’s recent announcement that MSU had met all five of the Performance Funding measures by the State CBHE (Clifs-notes-vol-2-no-4) the method by which MSU met the core mission requirement was solely a result of changes in how the numbers were calculated (apparently mandated by the data collection protocol and not by MSU) and not by any actual improvement.  In fact, funding of MSU’s core mission actually fell slightly as a percent of the total budget when discounting the changes in the accounting method.  As a result, the core mission at MSU remains underfunded in the budget and needs to be addressed for future performance funding. 

Improving funding for MSU’s core mission, especially funding for instruction and research, remains one of the fundamental priorities of the MSU Faculty Association.

Informational Meeting for All MSU Faculty Members

To the right, you will notice a link for a flyer regarding our upcoming meeting to report the results of the MSUFA one-on-one listening survey of faculty.  This has been a time-consuming and labor intensive activity and is far from done.  Let me summarize the information on the flyer:

·       All MSU Faculty are invited to an information meeting about our listening survey and the MSU Faculty Association.

·       Date/Time: February 21, 2013 @ 3:30 to 5 pm.

·       Place: University Heights Baptist Church, 1010 South National Avenue (on the SE corner of National and Grand) just south of the Educational Community Credit Union. Come in the Grand Street door and you will be directed to the meeting room.

We will have a panel of speakers, who will present the finding from the listening survey including both MSU Faculty Association members and representatives of the Missouri NEA.  You are cordially invited to come and learn what your colleagues view as the major concerns they have about their jobs at MSU and what they think about collective bargaining at MSU.

There will be a Question and Answer session and light refreshments will be served.  Please come and join us as we discuss the future of MSU.