United Academics and the elite stratum of the university administration offer profoundly different answers to these questions. Unionized faculty members view their students as citizens whose attendance at college offers access to critical thinking skills that allow them to participate fully in the wider world. Elite administrators have repeatedly expressed their sense that students are a source of financial resources for the institution. The administrative rhetoric at UVM has become one of “entrepreneurship,” in which the focus of the university should be revenue maximization, not civic responsibility. Union members have argued for smaller classes and for maintaining opportunities for professors to address their students’ educational needs personally. But upper-level administrators have threatened to place ever-increasing burdens of work upon the people whose job it is to educate the next generation. ... Moreover, as to salaries, the administration has repeatedly misrepresented the facts by offering averages of tenured and tenure-track faculty salaries that do not capture the wide range of compensation earned by the members. The range of faculty salaries at UVM is very wide. United Academics is dedicated to all of its members, many of whom are lecturers without the protection of tenure, who earn substantially lower salaries than anything the administration mentions. For some lecturers and other faculty making less than $50,000 per year, the administration’s most recent financial proposal would actually result in a diminution of total compensation in this academic year, once the effects of the small wage increase and substantial health care premium increase are combined. One principle of United Academics’ bargaining has been – and remains — that the union will not accept a package of salary and health care changes that results in any member experiencing a decrease in compensation. vtdigger.org/2014/09/07/felicia-kornbluh-stake-wages/
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 20:01:18 +0000
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