ALUW Fall Quarter Meeting: Thursday, November 30th, 2006

1. Old Business

  • Approval of the Minutes: Minutes from previous meeeting were approved without changes.
  • Treasurer's report (Linda): ALUW is doing well. Donated to LSA Holiday party; donation in honor of Betsy's father.

3. New Business

  • New ALUW Website shown: Separate website, now on dept server. Still growing. Please make recommendations. Positive comments shared with group.
  • Faculty Council Appointments: Sending out invitations for councils. Everyone can only serve for two years unless there's a reason for person to stay on. If you've never been on a council, it's a fascinating way to learn about what's going on in the university. Those finishing first year will be asked if they want to continue.
  • Legislative Committee: Lisa will be personally taking this on, have people take it. Have more of a relationship with AAUP and participate in legislative committee. This year had sympathetic house, so we should be in position to monitor this.
  • Elections announced. Incoming board members recognized. Outgoing members recognized, as well. Gavel passed to John. New ALUW Executive Board are:
    • John Bolcer (University Archives/Special Collections), President
    • Louise Richards (Fisheries/Oceanography Library), Vice President
    • Angela Weaver (Drama Library), Treasurer
    • Amanda Hornby (UW Bothell), Secretary
    • Anna B. Sveinbjornsson (Reference & Research Service), Junior Trustee
  • One of the things on the needs to be done is revision of bylaws.
  • ALUW Salary Compression Study Committee: Reminder of charge: "Committee will examine UW librarians' salary data and data about individual positions to determine whether and where compression exists, and to recommend appropriate remedies." No one will be able to be recognized in. Used 4 methods of analysis. Betsy was impressed by the quality of the report. Comments recognized.

4. Program: ALUW Compression Study

  • Notes: Salaries based on September 1, 2006, including admin stipends. Access to SPSS. Committee did a lot literature searching.

    Methodology: No definition. Used several methods because of different definitions. Look at groups rather than individual. Looked at literature and used different methods.

    Regression analysis: can look at many different factors. Takes all salaries and makes prediction about what they should be.

    Comparison Ratios: Average salaries by rank and creates ratios or percentages.

    UW Faculty Method: Used by David Lovell. Not nationally recognized. Find median, add 7.5% and see if others in next rank are below.

    Looked at a number of other factors, as well.

    Results: Salary by rank: graphed and created a lot discussion. A lot of overlap.

    Different results depending on definition and methodology.

    See graph of methods.

    24 librarians with compressed salaries. Costs $30,000 to raise all of these individuals’ salaries. Ranged from $100-3200 per person. For UW faculty, 25 faculty who needed $20,000 each to solve the problems.

    Question: Just to get people out of compression range? Yes. Recommendations help address this problem.

    Overlap is not related to compression directly.

    Salary spread by rank: normal for 30-40% in pay grade. Within ranks the percentage changes. Not senior librarians, but those with 1-5 years that have 3.5% lower than UW librarians as while. Bothell paid 5.1% below UW librarians as a whole.

    Recommendations (based on faculty analysis)

    Question:

    Did you make any observations of unionization on salaries? Not in this state of Washington. It’s something we’d have to look into.
  • Charles Chamberlin on salary compression: Thanks committee and ALUW. Positive that we don’t have severe compression. We do have severe salary problems. ARL: Compare poor salaries to poor salaries. Salaries not driven totally by rank; hierarchical administration has impact on salaries. Merit Review: 3.2 Salary increases. Friday deadline for Provost because she had to get her recommendations into Regents. Recommend 4.5% increase for librarians and professional staff. Betsy doesn’t think that it’s settled. Could come with some labels. Have to wait to see. Keen on looking at recommendations of task force, especially 1 and 2. Wanted to get a sense of where people stood on those. Have to look at money identified from Provost. Don’t think we can do $150,000, but we could do a part of that perhaps, assuming that we want to devote some of the university to that. U. identified some groups of faculty who were very far behind their peers, so they want to give them more money. Don’t anticipate extra $$ above and beyond what they get. Another source is using existing positions to pay for salary increases. Separate budgets make the picture a little more complicated.
  • Discussion: How often do regents approve of recommendations? They generally follow recommendations of provost or president. Greater concern among faculty for getting more $$ now. Being a little more vocal now, and regents will hear from them.

    Might not be 4.5% b/c of redistributing to different individuals? Yes.

    What impact would it have on the percentage? Hard to tell.

    Was the small percentage for $30,000? Yes. It will be some component of that amount. May get instructions to address compression increase.

    Legislature determined that Sept. 1 will be the date of increase.

    Are positions available to be cannibalized? Not much left. Advertising for 4 positions right now.

    Is there any avenue to go to the regents to ask for money? Betsy’s been a staunch advocate in talking with provost. The step now, I don’t know. Regents would aim for the quick fix. All of the information they collect is comparison to peers.

    Why are salary increases so inconsistent? Must follow state and universities of budget.

    Why not have step increases determined for ranks? Structure has never been discussed. California is the only U. that has that.

    To cannibalize positions, how would we do that? Haven’t figured out how to do this. Must think about it w/in the context of departments:
  • Comments
    • Seriously interested in continuing to look at recommendations.
    • Entry-level: tried to be competitive in the market, but have been more competitive at entry-level. Don’t have huge problems recruiting, but further up.
    • Interested in looking at floor for ranks. Could implement that as part of Recommendation #2. Floor is not a ceiling. Still have overlap. Wouldn’t eliminate chart. Faculty do have a floor system. Will have to figure out how quickly the floor will move.

What about salary increases, but one-time, one year awards for extraordinary work? We’re governed by guidelines that LAP forwarded to Betsy.