Catherine Lynde, President of the UMass Boston Faculty Union

Thanks for this opportunity to speak to you this morning- and welcome to all our new trustees.

Let me start by reminding us all that the university's reputation - in the community, among students, among other intellectuals - is based completely on the quality of people who work there. The role of high-quality faculty in building the university's reputation is central to this and is my focus this morning.

In order to recruit and retain the necessary high quality faculty, the University must remain competitive with its peers around the country. Unfortunately, our competitiveness is deteriorating, and the current salary offer guarantees further deterioration. Here are some sobering facts about our university that you need to know:

Your current salary offer and the last few years of faculty salary changes mean that the value of our salaries will decline. I'm sure you know that the CPI is growing at over 2 times your offer at the moment.
Private higher education salaries are higher than those for public institutions. The AAUP released a study in the CHE indicating that private institution faculty salaries are 33% higher than those for public higher education. (CHE 4-8-08 report on AAUP study)
Compared to other institutions in New England - public and private - UMass faculty salaries are 5.5% below the average - as compared to: Rutgers NB & Newark, Penn St., SUNY Buff & Stoney Brk, MD-CP, UCONN, Del.
If you look at the individual campuses, you see that Boston faculty salaries (adjusted for cost of living) currently are 18.3% below their peer average - that's $15K; and Amherst salaries are 28.5% lower than their peers (that's $26K). (This by the way, is based on results produced by the President's office.)
The current contract offer would significantly add to the disparity.
The reason for this: the faculty at UCONN have recently signed a 3-year contract with a salary pkg of 5,5,5 - let's call it 15%; Rutgers faculty have a 3-year contract for 14%; U New Hampshire's is for14.5%. Ours, would be 7.5%

This is a significant gap: for UMass to catch-up with these institutions, faculty salaries would have to rise by about 7% p.a. for 3 years - and we'd still be a bit short.

We're not even asking for that, although many would say that would be a fair offer.

A sign of the problem can easily be found on the Amherst campus. If you look at the number of faculty hires authorized on that campus each year (for the last 2 years), you see that they manage to fill just slightly over half of those authorized positions. We all know the significant amount of time and expense that goes into recruiting faculty. This is a sorry waste of a lot of our money and time.

We are clearly in a situation where our relative salaries are making it difficult to recruit and retain the faculty we urgently need to maintain, not to speak of raising, the quality of our institutions.

We see a University that is mistakenly thinking that bricks and mortar alone will enhance the reputation of the university - while our ability to attract and retain high-quality faculty is deteriorating. This is a short-sighted strategy which guarantees the further deterioration of our reputation.

Max Page, President of the UMass Amherst Faculty Union

Good morning. I am Max Page, President of the Massachusetts Society of Profesors, the 1400-member faculty and librarian union at Umass Amherst. I want to offer a special welcome to Secretary Reveille - I mean, Trustee Reveille. Perhaps now the Governor will hear and know a little more about where the University of Massachusetts puts its resources. And a warm welcome to my union brothers and sisters who traveled from every campus in the system to be here.

Two things will surely come to pass today:

First, President Wilson will tell us that Deval Patrick is more supportive of public higher education than any Governor he has seen. He will further tell us all that this has been a terrific year for the university and that things are looking great for UMass.

We don't need to hear those lines again. From where we sit, things are not great. No one worked harder to elect this Governor and to get the capital and life sciences bills passed than your employees and their unions. But we are sick of hearing the Good News about the university when both you and the Governor are failing to invest in the most essential element of a university: its faculty and staff who make the university what it is.

Jack, your stock response to our members who have written to you is how much you support us and how much you believe that we all do better when we "work together." The union members in this room know what "let's work together" means: "tough luck for you." If you are in the President's Office, "working together" means you got 4% increases, minimum, last year. And the closer you "work together " -- as in, closer to the President's corner office - the more likely you'll see raises like 15%, or even 45%. Now that's what I call a raise! I'm still looking for a staff or faculty member who has ever received anything like the $91,000 raise one President's Office staffer who is here today received last year. And the President didn't do so badly for himself -- $144,000 in bonuses and pay increases. Not too shabby.

The second thing that will happen today is that you will no doubt approve the appointment of Michael Collins as the new chancellor of the medical school. Praise will be showered, applause will be given, and then in private the compensation subcommittee will approve a compensation package worth at least $600,000. You'll say, if asked, that we need to provide a "competitive" salary for the chancellor, that this is standard around the country, etc., etc., etc. I am going to make a wild guess that you aren't going to tell him that we are all need to "work together" and then ask him to take a pay cut each of the next three years.

For some of us, $600,000 is a lot of money.

" $600,000 a year would pay for a full .5% increase for every single one of my 1400 faculty members and librarians on the Amherst campus.

" $600,000 a year would pay for .61% increase for all 1700 members of the Professional Staff Union.

" $600,000 would be able to add nearly $600 to the paychecks of all 1010 of the members of the University Staff Association in Amherst, who pull in, on average, $35,000 a year. Several hundred make closer to $20,000, well below the living wage for the Amherst area.

It is also worth noting that Mr. Collins will have a salary close to thirty times that of a starting clerical staffperson in Amherst. In case you haven't read the papers, the era of overpaid executives is over.

I was here in June with these same colleagues, urging you to advocate on behalf of your employees to the Governor, and to come to the table with a fair offer. That was after having already spent five months at the table with your representatives.

And yet here we are, at the end of September, nine months after we began negotiating, and some of our units have still not received a formal offer at the table. Others have received a robot-like recitation of the Governor's parameters, and with nothing done to improve them. Indeed, the President's Office offered their own toxic contributions to an unacceptable offer.

Do you, my trustees, know they are doing this?

I'm not sure which I want to hear less - your ignorance or your complicity. I guess I do know which I prefer - ignorance, after all, can be cured. That's what we do at a university.

I am, therefore, going to believe that you have not been fully engaged in bargaining. I am going to believe that you understand that investing in the human infrastructure of this university is as important as investing in the physical infrastructure. I am going to believe that you know that your dreams for a better UMass rests with recruiting, retaining, and investing in your faculty and staff.

So, how about it? No more passing the buck. You are our employer. Get your President's Office to the table, make them deliver legitimate offers on all aspects of our contracts, and show - in actions and not just words - that you understand that a great university begins with a real investment in your workers.