On Feb. 29, the United Academics of the University of Oregon submitted a proposal to the administration regarding salary raises for faculty members. The original proposal included a salary increase of 6% for professors who had finished a six-year employment, along with merit changes, which are based on employee performance. There are increases in salary for any faculty member hired prior to the increase date.
UA is an organization focused on defending public education and prioritizing research and academic opportunities at the University of Oregon. The organization boasts approximately 1,900 members, including librarians, research faculty and tenured and non-tenured faculty.
UA presented their proposals on March 7. The salary increases of UA’s new contract are divided into three categories: annual increases, salary floor increases and review-related increases.
The administration sent its counter proposal on March 14, making significant changes to the original draft.
These changes included pushing merit increases to 3% every year for three years.
The increase would do little to close the gap between the UO average salary for tenure-track faculty across all UO colleges, which rests at $114,800 and the Association of American Universities’ average salary of $143,200.
According to UA President Mike Urbancic, the counterproposal received from the administration was “frustrating.” Urbancic stated that after the experiences with GTFF, the SEIU and the administration in their respective bargaining processes, UA was hoping to have similar resolutions.
“[The counterproposal] doesn’t even cover all of the bargaining unit,” Urbancic said. “That doesn’t include the protemps or post-docs. It covers the tenure-track faculty and the career-faculty. There are hundreds of faculty on campus who are in more temporary positions, called pro-temp positions, who wouldn’t be eligible for any of those raises. For a significant percentage of the faculty, the administration’s offer was zero percent.”
Economics Associate Professor Keaton Miller is head of calculating proposals for UA and according to Miller, the determination of UA’s proposal numbers was based on its Association of American Universities comparators.
“We looked at where UO salaries are now, the Office of Institutional Research does reports on that, and how they are relative to our AAU comparators,” Miller said. “So we took that and we said, ‘What we want is to get to the average.’ The number right now across the whole university is about 84% of average.”
According to Miller, UA’s goal is to get to 100% of average faculty salaries at UO and based on a three-year contract, that calculated number was a 9.4% increase each year.
UA Executive Vice President and Greenberg Associate Professor Deborah Green. According to Green, UAUO’s proposal is designed to promote equitable salaries for faculty members across different departments to meet the AAU average.
“There are still pretty significant equity issues within departments for tenure track employees,” Green said. “When we worked on our proposal, we realized that with inflation and how far we’ve fallen behind just the average of these AAU public universities. We realized that we needed to actually do what we call across-the-board raises.”
According to Green, UA’s proposal was “well thought out” and calculated with faculty who gave their reviews and put personal time into the recommendation.
“You would actually be surprised at how little money our career faculty make and there are people that can no longer afford their rent,” Green said. “You think about students and what it costs to live in Eugene, well guess what, that’s what faculty are facing also.”
Merit is also included in the third year of the proposal, Green said.
“The soft dollar cost is something no one ever considers in a university,” Green said. “They’re only thinking about dollars in and out, but hours that you spend at your job is a soft dollar cost in a sense that it’s not something that’s even a part of your job.”
Like many undergraduate students, first-year Zoe Thomas was unaware of the issues the faculty were facing.
“I feel like it’s important that people get paid for their value,” Thomas said.
According to a prior climate survey by Miller the issues with salary are linked with faculty morale on campus. Miller had presented his information on salary comparisons during bargaining sessions, along with the UO Senate and Board of Trustees in separate meetings in March 2023.
According to the IDEAL Climate Survey, 30% of tenured faculty have strongly considered leaving their positions at UO.
Miller noted that the bargaining process with the administration had been arduous for UAUO.
“In negotiations, there’s always this temptation to go back and forth,” Miller said. “Each little thing you give up is some terrible thing, and you ask for way more than you think you’re going to get. You need things to give up — you need to be able to say ‘no’ to things.”
According to Assistant Director of Issues Management Eric Howald in an email, UO’s Employee and Labor Relations does not conduct interviews while bargaining is underway.
