Re: forum yesterday

[Lou Hafer <lou@cs.sfu.ca>]

Folks,

    I'll add a bit of personal experience, a few meta-issues, and a 
healthy dose of personal opinion. And state off the top that I was not 
able to attend the anti-union forum.

    When I came to SFU in 1981, differentials and retention awards were 
still rare. There were two threads behind that:

  * The salary scale had not yet slid to its current, woefully
    inadequate, level.

  * There was a notion that the job of a university professor was
    to teach and perform research. That job was not any more or
    less difficult based on subject, hence the pay should not differ
    from one subject to another. Merit moved you up the salary scale
    more or less quickly.

This began to change significantly within a few years of my arrival.

    My recollection was that even at the time when I was part of the 
SFUFA table team for bargaining (late 80's/early 90's? I'm getting 
senile :-) the base of the salary scales was falling behind inflation. 
This has surely not changed; I expect it's gotten much worse. (I think 
Carl Schwarz has published statistics to this effect, and could 
certainly contribute some hard facts to this discussion.) In effect, the 
worth of the job of university professor is much less today, relative to 
other jobs, than it was when I started. This is a very long term trend 
(and not limited to university professors). If that doesn't bother you, 
then you don't have to worry about the base of the salary scales.

    University management (not just at SFU) chose to address this issue 
with salary differentials and retention awards. They pay more (in some 
cases, much more) based on whether the skill set of the individual is 
more in demand in private industry. Note this is NOT based on any 
attribute of the job of university professor. It's based on inability to 
attract people away from private industry, which has an entirely 
different perspective on the relative worth of our respective areas of 
expertise. It's also a classic example of divide-and-conquer. Faculty 
offered top-ups are less likely to be vocal advocates of raising the 
base of the salary scale, particularly if it lessens their own top-up. 
(I'm all right, Jack!) At this point, 60% of us (Neil's figure) are 
receiving some sort of top-up. Much of this is NOT grounded in the 
relative demands of our jobs but purely on the cost of hiring us away 
from private industry. I'll note that I'm in a department (computing) 
with substantial differential.

    It's an interesting question to ponder whether this is good or bad. 
Would private industry step up to teach certain disciplines if 
universities said `Hey, we won't/can't pay that?' The security and 
freedom of a tenured university professorship is surely worth something 
compared to the insecurity of private industry. One can argue that 
universities should never have started down this path.

    Universities not constrained by inadequate funding and gov't 
control (private and/or possessing big endowments) were also able to pay 
more to attract top faculty with demonstrated superior skill in research 
and teaching. In my view, this is legitimate (within reason). This is 
salary differential based on skills that ARE relevant to the job of 
university professor.

    JD cites stats presented at the forum that mention salary 
compression. In my view, this is not a problem *provided* that we're 
pulling the bottom up, not pulling the top down. One of the things 
that's always baffled me in these arguments is the immediate leap to the 
notion that we need to pull down the ones on top, rather than lift up 
the ones on the bottom. It sort of cedes victory to management, which 
will always plead poverty and lack of competitiveness. It distracts from 
what I see as the real failing: An unwillingness to take on the much 
more difficult task of confronting the provincial and federal 
governments over funding priorities, and making the public aware of the 
long-term damage that's being done by underfunding.

    There are lots of nuances, but this is too long already.

    Have at it, folks. There must surely be other opinions.

                                    Lou