In an earlier blog entry [0], I noted that the union and the administration disagreed significantly over the cost of a 1% raise. We suggested the sides get together and work out this issue, but it didn't happen. Instead, in the last 20 minutes of fact-finding the administration presents a new and greatly reduced cost estimate. In January, they said a 1% raise cost $750,000, but in the fact-finding exhibit it was closer to $600,000. So the same amount of money already allocated for the contract could have gone further and given us an average raise of 3.86% - even more than we were requesting. Here are my comments on this matter to the Board of Regents on this matter.

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Hello and thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Paul Leighton, and I teach criminology in the Dept of Sociology. I have been at EMU 10 years, through three contracts and been on strike three times. I was on the negotiating team this summer and became chief negotiator in December.

My talk was originally going to be about why the administration should accept the recomendations fo the fact-finder. But I now want to raise the question of why the union should. I ask that no to undercut the petition President Bunsis delivered from faculty urging you to acept the fact-finding recommendation. Nor I am announcing a change in EMU-AAUP position - we will accept the fact-finder's recommendations if the administration does.

My question is promoted by a new calculation from the administration on the cost of a 1% raise for faculty. The new estimate introduced in the final moments of fact-finding is significantly lower than earlier estimates, which means the same budgeted resources could go much further. My question is why the university didn't make a better offer, and why we shouldn't settle on the basis of that rather than wait for the fact-finder's recommendation.

Specifically, from August until January, the administration claimed a 1% raise for faculty cost $750,000. As late as January 4, a month after the administration presented its 5 year offer to faculty, the administration's negotiating team told the AAUP team that a 1% raise cost $750,000 (so they could not afford what we were asking). We believed this to be an error, and believed it to be a big enough error to be a major contributing factor to problems in reaching a contract. We requested a meeting to discuss the methodology and assumptions behind a 1% raise, but the administration never followed through.

The chart you have before you [0] shows the total dollar amount the administration's December offer (which is reiterated in fact-finding) would cost under the assumption that a 1% raise cost $750,000. We then took that amount of money and divided it by the new, lower estimate the administration's team introduced in fact-finding. As you can see, the result is an average raise of 3.86% a year for four years. This is very much in line with the 3.8% raise the Chronicle of Higher Education just reported as a national average for faculty last year. And, this could be achieved without additional resources. The same amount of money you intended to spend back in Dec is still what you would spend now, just the new cost estimate gives a more realistic picture of the proposed raise it equates to.

Assuming that the earlier estimate was made in good faith, why didn't the new estimate generate a new proposal to settle this contract? Without allocating any additional money to the faculty contract, the administration could have settled the dispute and saved everyone a great deal of time, money and aggravation. It could have taken steps to restoring harmony on campus by taking the initiative instead of generating more ill-will through its fact-finding tactics.

At the very least, the administration has no basis for rejecting recommendations of the fact-finder, since they will cost the uadministration substantially less than it was already prepared to spend.

Thank you.

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Additional Information:

The AAUP presented information on the cost of our compensation back in August 2006 when we first presented a compensation proposal. See slide 17 of the proposal here [0]. This is a short version of what we presented at the table, which had much more extensive costing data. The administration did not engage on this issue and just offered us 2% (minus a big health care hit).

The AAUP included detailed cost estimates in the main presentation we sent to the fact-finder on Feb 1, 2007. See the presention here and look at Exhibits 370 - 380 [0]. The administration did not include cost data in its presentation. The hearings were structured so that they had an opportunity to rebut this on Feb 20th during the fact-finding hearing. In spite of having this for almost three weeks and it being the correct time to do so, they said nothing.

In the closing moments of the hearing - during the final moments of the administrations time to summarize - they introduce an exhibit containing information on the cost of a raise. We objected that it was out of order, and the fact-finder gave us time to review the exhibit. We came back and reviewed the multiple errors in it. More to the point, we commented that was submitted at an inappropriate time in order to evade scutiny of the exhibit. It was out of order but consistent with the administration's general behavior of engaging in fact-finding in a way that tried to limit analysis, scrutiny and critique of their position.

Indeed, as Howard noted in an email [1], their final brief contained new information, even though it was not supposed to. They costed out the contract in a way that is inconsistent with how they presented the 2004 contract to the Regents. That shouldn't be a surprise because the finacial picture of the university they submitted to fact-finding was inconsistent with the audited financial statements they presented to the Regents; it was the AAUP that included the audied fainancial statements in fact-finding (see the link above for the main presentation).