After inflation has rocked the economy for several years, United Academics is fighting for higher across-the-board wages in its new labor contract.
UA, a labor union made up of faculty members, has been bargaining for a new contract with the University of Oregon since February, and while it has come to agreements on many articles, salary is a highly contested issue on the table.
While the rate of inflation has slowed in the past two years, faculty remain “at a breaking point,” due to the increased cost of living in Eugene, according to UA Treasurer and Associate Economics Professor Keaton Miller.
Miller said that he thinks the proposed labor contract is “behind the times” in an increasingly expensive Eugene housing market.
“If you are trying to buy your first home and start a family it [current salaries] means you can’t afford a down payment and have to eat into [your] savings,” Miller said.
According to UO’s bargaining updates, the university believes their faculty compensation adequately accounts for the cost of living because the cost of living in Eugene is about 5% lower than the average cost of living among Association of American Universities schools.
AAU is an association of 71 schools considered to be “America’s leading research universities.”
Kathryn Mills, associate professor of psychology at UO and executive vice president of UA, said she still thinks more focus should be put towards addressing the cost of living expenses.
Mills said she believes that UO administration’s current offers don’t adequately address the cost of living.
“I’m really concerned if we don’t secure the things that we are proposing it’s going to be hard for folks who want to stay because they really won’t be able to be a whole person here,” Mills said.
Miller said that he feels faculty at the bargaining table haven’t always been heard by the administration.
He described fellow professors as feeling “very hurt” and “taken advantage of” by UO. Miller did acknowledge the need to give the university some grace, though.
“Money is tight, it’s not like President Scholz can print money for us. There is always a lot of competition for those resources,” Miller said.
On its website, UO said that one of the main reasons it has not agreed to larger raises is because of how much money the university is paid by the state to begin with.
“[UO] receive[s] millions of dollars less in revenue annually than the AAU average,” and this is compensated by students’ tuition. UO said it “risk[s] pricing [itself] out of this highly competitive market if [it] increase[s] tuition incautiously.”
UO Communications Director Eric Howald also said in a statement to the Daily Emerald that UO wants “responsible financial stewardship [to] guide [its] negotiations during this bargaining cycle. Leadership must ensure that they are managing the institution’s long-term financial sustainability.”
UO’s website states the university would like to base raises almost entirely on merit, but UA’s Sept. 26 newsletter discusses focusing on increasing baseline pay before considering merit benefits.
“Merit pay is most appropriate once you have taken care of that cost of living, [if you haven’t done that] you are saying, ‘you just need to suck it up and deal with these high prices,’” Miller said.
Mills agrees — from her point of view, basing raises on merit “tugs at a sense of fairness for all,” and leads to faculty leaving if they don’t fit specific roles.
Currently, UO is proposing a 3% raise across the board for 2025, and no across-the-board raises in 2026 and 2027. According to their Sept. 26 newsletter, UA wants to focus on across-the-board raises of 3.4 to 8.5% for all three years of the contract.
Howald told the Daily Emerald that “the University of Oregon administration is fully committed to reaching an agreement with United Academics that positions UO faculty and the university for long-term success.”
UA is promoting community and union sign-on letters on its Instagram account, urging “community support” to agree upon a contract “quickly and equitably.” The union sign-on letter has over 691 signatures and the community letter has more than 444 as of Nov. 4.
According to Miller, UA may consider mediation if the two groups remain at a standstill by December.
“We have fallen behind our peers at other state institutions and we have fallen behind the cost of living here in Eugene. We are worse off than we were just a few years ago,” Miller said.
