Union President Dreiling caves to Math professors’ demands 03/01/2015

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Union President Dreiling caves to Math professors’ demands

  03/01/2015

Sure, it might be more accurate to say “Math faculty and Union cooperate to include differential ORP benefits in equity raise calculations”, but who would read a post with that headline?

Just in case you’re one of them, here’s the story:

UO faculty receive very different retirement benefits, depending on when they were hired, and on whether or not they opted into the defined benefit Oregon PERS system or the defined contribution Optional Retirement Plan. There are now 4 progressively less generous PERS tiers, depending on date of hire.

Faculty who choose the ORP get the same amount of money paid into their defined contribution plan as UO would have paid for the PERS defined contribution plan. PERS plans have been a better deal historically (sometimes amazingly so, as with Mike Bellotti and Dave Frohnmayer, now collecting about $500K and $250K a year respectively) but include some political risk if the legislature cuts benefits (as happened a few years ago) and if the courts go along with it (the lawsuit should be settled in a few months).

The retirement tier that you were hired into has significant consequences for compensation equity. The earlier you were hired, the better the retirement deal – even for faculty with the same pay and rank. Equity comparisons that ignore this consideration are not fully equitable.

UO Math faculty have pointed this out on this blog, and to the UAUO faculty union leadership. In response, the union has added this language to its faculty raise proposal:

5.c.3: In July 2015 the University [administration] and the Union will form a committee to made up of three members of each party to develop internal equity guidelines for distribution to departments and units addressing compression with ranks, inversion between ranks, gender disparities, and compensation inequities created by different retirement categories.

5.c.4 In August 2015 departments and unit heads shall allot their proportional share of this internal equity pool according to the guidelines give to address … and compensation inequities created by different retirement categories.

The full proposal (article 26) should be posted on the UAUO website soon.

Of course if the UO administration refuses to give equity raises, none of this will matter. We’ll find out when we get their counter on March 12, at Bargaining Session V.