ALUW Spring Quarter Meeting: Thursday, May 18, 2006
Approximate Headcount: 40
The meeting was called to order by ALUW president Carole Svensson at
Spring Quarter Business Meeting
Storti Lawsuit (
The Storti lawsuit is "dead" to us as we have no legal standing in the case.
Lisa and Carole met with Provost Wise to discuss librarian salary issues based on the Salary Survey Report done by the ALUW Salary Survey Committee. The meeting went well; in fact Provost Wise would like to have regular meetings with members of the
Treasurer's Report (Eileen Llona)
Through
OPERATING FUND LEGISLATIVE FUND
Balance: $2299.76 $2577.54
Contributions (for past year): $690.00 $790.00
Future Plans for ALUW Beginning Fall 2007 (Carole Svensson and
Faculty Council Reports (No reports were submitted)
Election Results (Carole Svensson)
Out of approximately 150 ballots that were sent out, 102 were returned. Newly elected officers are: John Bolcer (Pres. Elect), Justin Wadland (Secretary), and Angela Weaver (Jr. Trustee).
Outgoing Board members are: Carole Svensson (President), Eileen Llona (Treasurer), and Matt Parsons (Secretary). At this time the gavel was handed over to
Program: Salary Survey Report
The program began with Joe Kiegel and Thom Deardorff giving an overview of the salary report which included the committee's charge, membership, the process they went through to create the report and the committee's recommendations.
ALUW members in attendance were divided into several small groups to discuss the following questions:
1. What should ALUW's next step be?
2. How much energy are we willing to dedicate to this next step?
3. How do we measure our level of success?
Note takers were assigned to each group. Below are the transcripts from the small groups as provided by the note takers:
Small Group 1
Priority: getting more money!
Strategies:
· Talk to the Provost-develop a relationship there, get her on our side
· Raise awareness outside the UW-educate people, get issue out to the media and the public
· Get more info/explanation about how money is allocated (from legislature to the UW, from UW to Libraries, and within Libraries). What is the process? Needs to be more transparent. How can ALUW work with Libraries Admin? We need to feel like Admin is on our side and is working on our behalf (there is the feeling that they don't consider this an issue since they're making a comfortable salary). They need to tell us what they're doing to help us improve our salaries.
· Identify what pots of money the University and the Libraries have control over that can be used to increase salaries (e.g. recruiting and retention funds, etc.)
· Make the Libraries Personnel Code a binding contract with the UW (like the Faculty Handbook-how did the faculty do this?)
· Look at the compression issue-do a regression analysis. Do this first so if there is any extra money, it can be allocated fairly. Look at possibly giving unequal percentage increases (e.g. people making a lot get a smaller percentage increase than people who make little or who are heavily compressed).
Success: 4% is a start, but there has to be a plan for addressing salaries in the future (e.g. target dates, deadlines, increases every year)
Small Group 2
Question #1:
Work to increase salaries.
Increase status of librarians within the UW:
Get onto the faculty senate
Get written into the faculty handbook: the senate has been focusing on the language and content of the hand book recently, is it time to explore obtaining faculty status, or changing to a special status like "Library Faculty?"
Leverage the fact that we now have a Dean in order to get more money for the Libraries.
Work within our own system to put pressure on Administration to increase salaries - "we don't have a union, all we have is ALUW."
Explore the option of reallocating salaries from vacant positions.
Take our cause to groups outside the Libraries (for instance UW Admin.).
Look deeper into the compression issue.
General Comments: "The 'nice guys finish last' scenario needs to stop." "If the UW really cares about our salaries, they will come up with the money."
Question #2:
Interest is high within this small group. It was generally felt that the salary issue was worth expending money (hiring someone) and also volunteering for to help out.
General Comments: Can we gage energy level by the percentage of returned ballots (aprox. 66%) or by the turn out of this meeting (aprox. 40 people).
Question #3:
Obtain formal negotiation capabilities - need to establish ALUW as a collective bargaining group??
Get faculty status.
General Comments: Did we look at peer institutions within WA state (WSU, etc.) and compare our situation to theirs?
SMALL GROUP 3
What one thing should ALUW work toward next year?
One participant remembered that ALUW met with Gary Locke?, budget director of the state that year, and we got raises. If it wasn't
Perhaps we should join with the profession staff to ask
Charles C. pointed out that the legislature has already approved a 1.6% raise for us September 1. The university will add to that somewhat. We requested a 3% average for professional staff and librarians. The faculty will get 2.6 average and 1.6 for classified. The Regents will have to decide.
Can we explore non-monetary rewards? Would people be okay with that? Is that even an option? More vacation time? Responses were that we already have generous vacation. We just need more money in the paycheck at the end of the month. Subsidized housing would be helpful. Another said that we want help with work. Unless we have that, we can't take the vacation that we have. Better work loads. More time off doesn't pay the bills, but we could do like the community colleges.
What if we don't replace anybody that retires and reuse money for salaries, i.e., cannibalize positions. One response was that we sound like everybody on campus-just give us money. There's too much work to be able to do without the positions. The backlog would increase. Another: but warehouse space is cheaper than salaries.
Should departments help with subject specialist salaries? Library of Congress is already doing some of that.
Shouldn't we fight to get faculty status? Answer-it might not help. They are underpaid relative to us at the moment.
We do keep losing new hires due to cost of living. That's why subsidized housing would help. The Homestreet program wasn't much. We could get discounts on things.
Other things that can be done locally-UW could pick up all medical costs, or switch retirement matching to 2/3. It would result in more take-home. We already have heavily subsidized bus passes. We can argue that we are increasing take home rather than salaries.
What if we compare ourselves to other people with master's degrees? How do we do compared to teachers in Seattle Public Schools.
Another way is to increase the travel budget. That would constitute a raise.
How do we really measure how we are doing? Answer--when people don't leave and we get the new hires we want.
SMALL GROUP 4
Past salary strategies by ALUW have focused on state legislature; perhaps now is the time to focus our efforts on working with UW administration. We should meet with campus administration, and give them real stories on how we are losing talented librarians (similar to faculty stories). The group hopes that ALUW can meet with the Provost on a regular basis to press the point of improving salaries. Perhaps getting involved in the discussions regarding keeping more control of tuition on campus would help. Also, it would be helpful if ALUW board members or volunteers attend AAUP, Faculty Senate, Faculty Council on University Libraries, and the Professional Staff Association meetings to gather information on other salary strategies being pursued by faculty and professional staff.
Keep the lobbyist, and ensure that ALUW gets any info regarding bills that affect faculty or staff salaries. The current level of effort/enthusiasm of the ALUW legislative committee is low, and we hope that we can recruit more enthusiasm.
Questions regarding the peer group comparisons: how meaningful are these numbers to the legislature and/or campus administration? The peer group is also used by UW faculty, and the 75th percentile is a comparison used by the state HEC board.
If we go with the recommended 4% increase, the medical library still falls short of reaching the 75th percentile.
Success, at a minimum, would be getting at least an annual inflation-based raise.
We should ask the Libraries Administration to do a more complete regressive analysis on salary compression.
The membership reconvened and discussed the highlights of the small group discussions with the larger group. Some of the common themes and additional comments that were shared were:
- Increasing our status within the University
- Raising awareness, both within and outside the Univerisity
- Clarification about the process of money allocation from top to bottom
- Focusing on campus administration rather than the legislative route
- Joining with professional staff
- Salary alternatives (9 month contracts, reduced work weeks, equipment, increase travel budgets, etc.)
Lisa Oberg and Carole Svensson wrapped up the program by sharing possible ways to define our salary problem, define a salary solution, measure success in reaching a solution, and identify sources of funding (who to approach) to help address the salary problem. Depending on how strongly we, as a membership, feel about this issue, any action such as forming additional committees, will have to be done by next fall to be in sync with possible legislative action.
Jill McKinstry brought up a good idea: That is to look at other universities which have been successful in addressing salary issues and learn from them how they did it.
The meeting was adjourned at
--Submitted by Matthew Parsons