Angry University of Alaska workers

Second negotiation session: neither side offers us enough! (2024-09-18)

2024-09-16, 09:00: University’s first supposal

On 2024-08-19 the United Academics faculty union presented a demand for 5% raises for 3 years. The union conceded that this would still leave faculty buying power below 2018 levels. It also does nothing to address pay inequality along lines of gender, race, and time of hire.

Today, an entire month later, the University bosses responded with their own offer: 2.75%, 3%, and 2.5%.

You do the math. The University almost halved what “we” asked for.

2024-09-16, 13:00: Union’s second supposal

We knew all along that if the University rejected its initial 5-5-5 supposal, the union would make more far-reaching demands. And so they have. UNAC’s second supposal calls for:

• a 15.9% raise to minimum salaries. For instance, this would move an assistant professor’s lowest possible pay from $60,420 to $70,020.
• Increases to department chair, overload, and summer assignment pay.
• Across the board salary increases during each year of CBA (2.75%, 3%, 3.5%).
• Potential for individual retention and equity increases.
• Potential for individual merit bonuses.
• Up to $15,000 per year as a “market increase to bargaining unit members whose salaries are under external market targets or need to be adjusted due to internal misalignments.” (Up to $15,000.)
• Annual faculty development fund increased from $300,000 to $500,000.

While these demands sound good, we note at least two significant problems.

First, the systems for retention, equity, and merit increases do not yet exist. Their creation is left entirely up to the University. Members must apply for these raises – they are not across the board. The University also has sole right to choose who does or does not get these increases.

For us this is utterly unacceptable. By making workers apply for bonuses individually (and maybe compete against each other), the union is endorsing a complete abandonment of solidarity and collective action. It also means groveling before our avowed class enemies!

Second, while a 15.9% increase to minimum salaries sounds radical, we think very few faculty will benefit.

What follows is our own analysis.¹ Even we got some details wrong, we believe our larger point stands. Even now, few faculty make below the union’s new proposed minimum salaries.

Assuming a 3.5% raise in FY26, here are the number of people per rank (followed by total number at the rank) who would still be below the union’s proposed new minimum. They are the ones who would get a raise of any size due to increased minimum salaries.

• Instructors: 8/49 (16%)
• Assistant professors: 51/334 (15%)
• Associate professors: 18/205 (9%)
• Professors: 6/274 (2%)
• Total: 83/862 (10%)

Again, we are assuming a 3.5% raise in FY26. This is possibly too generous an assumption. All the same, only 83 faculty – 10% – would start the year making below the union’s proposed minimum salaries. And few of these people make substantially below the proposed minimum salaries.

For example, a 3.5% across-the-board raise in FY26 would mean that the lowest paid assistant professor would make $63,652.50. They would need to have their salary adjusted to the new minimum salary, which would be $70,020. That is a 10% raise – not 15.9%. (As we said, the 15.9% number can easily mislead.) And this is for the single most extreme case. The 50 other assistant professors below the new minimum would see a raise less than 10%. Indeed, for all 51 assistant professors standing to make below the proposed new minimum salary, the average raise would be “only” $2,253. That’s an average raise of 3.33%.

To be clear, we salute all efforts to raise the pay of those faculty who make the least. This is the most important demand workers can make. (Solidarity with the lowest-paid workers is one reason we want to extend the struggle to staff and student workers!) Nevertheless, raising minimum salaries is not enough. The 15.9% number gives a radical veneer to a rather weak set of proposals. The overwhelming majority of faculty would be stuck with small annual raises, potential market adjustments, and byzantine processes for begging for bonuses.

2024-09-17, 11:45: University’s second supposal

The University opened by saying it is already working on retention and equity increases and merit bonuses.

This supports our claim that these demands, when made by the union, were feeble. The University bosses aren’t advancing their own bonuses plan out of the goodness of their heart. They know that a system of bonuses gives them cover. They can exploit just as ruthlessly as ever, all while claiming that the only workers who still suffer are the bad ones who do not qualify for bonuses.

Despite the insufficiency of the union’s minimum salary proposal, the University still wouldn’t accept it. Instead, they proposed these raises to minimum salaries:

• Post-doctoral: 15%
• Instructor/lecturer: 10%
• Assistant professor: 10%
• Associate professor: 10%
• Professor: 15%

The University also proposed a slightly stingier set of raises over three years: 2.75%, 3%, and 2.75% (versus the union’s call for 2.75%, 3%, 3.5%). That the University was so quick to basically mirror the union proposal suggests that the union did not ask for nearly enough.

The University agreed with union proposal to increase department head chair bonuses to $7,500. No complaints there, although this is still another gain that applies to very few people. However, the University disagreed with the proposal to move summer and overload credits from $1,500 to $1,800. They met the union half-way at $1,650.

The University left market adjustments out of their supposal. They seemed unable to explain why. Did they not have time to consider market adjustments, or were market adjustments a total no-go? Either way, the University’s negotiator ranted long and hard. He began, “what do we mean by a market? … I don’t get, personally, what ‘market’ means…” He then invented whole cloth an outcome nobody would ever propose (i.e., cutting the pay of those making above the market average). He also seemed to suggest that a market comparison study was impractical.

The union rightly responded to him, “I’m just making sure that you understand that market studies like this have been done multiple times for unionized faculty at the University of Alaska. This has been in the contracts in the past. … So it’s not a new, or innovative, or strange thing to be proposing. It’s something that the University has undertaken on its own as well, outside of CBAs.”

2024-09-17, 14:00: Union’s third supposal

The union proposed that both sides agree to non-controversial articles. This did not happen on Tuesday since the University needed time to consider them.

They union also called for weekly Zoom meetings. They argued the University had moved very slowly and that the last two days had proven that in-person negotiations are no better than Zoom negotiations.

Closing statements from the union side expressed how hard it is to keep working at UA. Two poignant statements:

• “The impression I am getting from UA now is that they expect us to take pay cuts to continue working here.”

• “If I was not retired with a retirement income from the military, as well as a disability pension from the VA, I could not afford to work for the University.”

Conclusion

The two sides slung a lot of numbers at each other.

But there is another calculation going on here. Not about money, but about the balance of force between the two classes. The University bosses know their offers amount to further pay cuts. They don’t care. They know that the UA workforce has so far been timid. In 2022 94% of faculty voted for “raises” that were well below inflation. Some faculty are so deluded, so enfeebled, that they talk about striking on weekends, so as not to disrupt University business. (To which one wit retorted, “how did these people get a PhD without even knowing what a strike is?” Maybe that goes back to the question of whether the University pays enough to attract capable candidates…)

At the end of the day, social questions aren’t settled by rational discourse about which solution is most fair. They are solved by force. The University bosses get this.

Thucydides was right: “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

We ask, will the UA workforce be strong or weak? It has no right to sympathy if it chooses weakness.

Notes