Faculty flop
The proposed faculty contract was hardly what faculty members sought.
And Thursday, when given the chance to voice their disgust, Faculty Association members should have taken the initiative - and shot down the abysmal contract.
The three-year contract provides a 3 percent annual salary increase accompanied by a $500 addition to base wages in 2008-09, a $525 addition in 2009-10 and a $550 addition in 2010-11.
Faculty sought 6 percent salary increases. This would have better adjusted salaries to keep pace with the cost of living; the Consumer Price Index indicated a 5.6 percent increase in consumer good prices from June 2007 to June 2008.
But the contract's worst feature is its health care plan. According to estimates from Management Department Chairman Kevin Love, individual health care costs will rise $94.78 per month in 2009-10 and $144.20 per month in 2010-2011. For families, the numbers are worse: increases of $236.76 per month in 2009-10 and $360.12 per month in 2010-2011, according to Love's figures.
The economy is rough. Many businesses are facing cutbacks. Faculty cannot reasonably expect a plush deal.
But they can expect a decent one. This was not it.
CMU faculty already ranked 11th of 13 Mid-American Conference schools in assistant professor salary, according to 2007-08 figures from the American Association of University Presidents. Lackluster salary increases, combined with a dismal health care package, do not improve this picture.
The administration should be ashamed of having offered such a poor deal to faculty, who are the academic backbone of the university. More resources should have been committed to better compensating faculty - even if this meant having to postpone renovating the Bovee University Center or constructing the medical school. Faculty should be the university's top priority.
Though it is somewhat admirable for faculty to have taken their lumps, this was an opportunity to stand firmly against the administration. Faculty obviously are not pleased with the contract, but they should have rejected it.
Now faculty are stuck with a three-year contract that makes working at CMU more of a deterrent than it should be. Low salaries may make it challenging to find strong tenure-track candidates; low salaries may encourage some current faculty to seek better deals elsewhere.
It was not impossible for the university to reshuffle its resources to provide a better deal for faculty. This makes the university's case different from many in the private sector; the administration just needed its feet put to the fire.
But when given the coals and embers, faculty voted to douse the fire.
Now they will pay the price - literally.
