The salary disparity between tenured and nontenure-track faculty members at all research and doctoral institutions is even more striking. According to the N.E.A. report, tenured professors of all ranks at private research institutions earned an average of $87,000 -- $31,000 more than nontenure-track faculty members. Tenured faculty members at public research institutions earned $69,000 -- $26,000 more than their nontenure-track colleagues at the same universities. ------------------------------------------------------------------
I thought I'd bring something up tangentially related to this thread, and I'm hoping that a few of you might have advice or opinions for me.
I'm in the teacher's assistant union at UC Berkeley, AGSE/UAW 2865. There are a few things that seem obvious to me about the financial situation of California and higher education next year 1. with the much lower expected tax revenue, combined with the huge 'energy crisis' debt that is being built up for the state - there is going to be a shortfall, and there are going to be cuts. K-12 education is underfunded in this state, but proposition 98 protects their status within the budget somewhat. 2. Distribution of money within the university of California, and at the state government level is a zero sum game. If money goes to one item, it has to be taken from another.
So this next year, I would bet money that there will either be pressure to raise tuition, sharply reduce CalGrants, not have pay increases for various employee categories or even reduce pay, or cut research money.
My union, and several of the other employee unions are frequently going out on brief strikes or having angry demonstrations and prolonged contract agreements due to low pay raises, lack of benefits or recognition etc - and the past couple years have supposedly been golden economic times. Our focus has usually been the university itself, and its priorities. We could make a good argument that administrator pay and research should be less of a priority than teaching goals. my union, AGSE, currently has almost no role in lobbying in Sacramento. Some of the larger unions do a bit of this. But wouldn't it make a great deal of sense to focus a lot more of our energy trying to affect the state government budget allocation process rather than just begging the university for a pay raise - because ultimately, the university divides up the money it gets from the state.
Which brings me to my main point. All of you have probably heard about the tremendous and disproportionate power that the prison guard's union in California has in state government. Despite much lower numbers, they spend more money in lobbying and campaign contributions than the teacher's unions. I have a personal agenda in trying to do anything I'm able to try to disrupt their level of power - although the university of california employees unions couldn't hope to seriously impact the CCPOA union - we could only perhaps make a nick - but that is what I would hope to do.
I would bet that a lot of teachers and university associated people have no idea that the guards are often earning $50-$60,000/year, depending on overtime and various other featherbedding revenue. I bet if people knew that, they would be angry. They would also be angry at the quiet influence that the CCP OA has on policy, fighting the implementation of prop 36 (diverting drug offenders) and in many other pieces of legislation. They are real bullies. The primary contribution that I make to progressive causes each week is sending books to prisoners in the Prison Literature Project, and I have friends who describe conditions inside prisons - My friend who supports some women at Chowchilla make me really depressed with his stories. He has friends sentenced under 3 strikes for heroin use (no violence) or being a minor accessory to drug dealing. and over 40% of women at chowchilla have caught hepatitis C (which is eventually deadly) from shared needle drug use, usually at the prison. It's really awful. And we both agree that it is the natural role of the teacher's unions to take on the C CPOA. Who else would do it. The money they drain off for prisons is coming out of our pockets. But anyway, what I would like to do is to try to bring my union on board in supporting some sort of resolution or statement (or even better a piece of legislation - but that would be more complicated) which would link higher education to the corrections budget. the reason why I would like to do this comes down to my own personal motivations regarding prisons, but isn't the logic pretty undeniable regarding the zero sum game of budget allocations. I talked with a librarian in another union and she thinks the idea of phrasing this as a competition with the prison budget would be a bad idea - we won't want them angry with us, but she would just like to have everyone call their representative and ask them to support a pay raise for university staff. I would support this too, but my interest level would dwindle to the point where I wouldn't be interested in organizing at that point.
The situation of a worsening economy and imminent budget problems almost provides the perfect situation for trying to get this issue into the news. I would almost be happy if I could get a few mentions of the situation with the CCPO A and increasing prison budget into the newspaper. A search of the SF Chronicle shows an average of 1 mention of the prison guard's union each year for the past 5 years. I would just like the facts of the situation to get into people's consciousness, even if there isn't a piece of specific legislation or suggested action attached at this point.
My shop steward is a really cool astrophysics graduate student who teaches algebra at San Quentin. He supports this idea. The budget of the University of California is $3.4billion/year. Corrections is $4.8billion. So far we've run up a $9billion tab this year in 'energy crisis' costs, which will surely continue to rise during the summer - so that is a much bigger item. I'd like to contemplate a way to tie in prisons + energy vs. higher education. I was kind of shocked at how expensive the MediCal medical coverage for poor Californians is - but that wouldn't naturally fit into what I'm trying to do. If you would like any statistics, I could forward those as well. I'm still searching for better or clearer numbers on pay levels for various employees, and the real impact of the CC POA.
My question for you is what do you think of this idea broadly, and specifically, do you have any suggestions for wording of a resolution that would tie together higher ed and prisons. Do you think it's bad to have rivaling unions? I would like to say "we UAW 2865 resolve that the average k-12 teacher's salary and university staff hourly wage should not be below that of a prison guard hourly wage", but salary actually varies quite a bit district by district. But I'm looking for something that is catchy, and public relations friendly, and would attract possible news interest, and start to provide moral reinforcement for any legislator who wanted to go against the CCP OA. It also can't be separated from the best interests of university employees, who surely do have varied political opinions, and some of whom probably are gung-ho anti-crime (no purely political resolution only talking about prisons). I need something that equates to "we resolve that higher education should be a higher priority than corrections", but that isn't so vague.
Christine Petersen
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