“Thats nuts pay them”: Students and community members respond to learning about low pay for Pitt faculty
Takeaways:
Dear colleagues,
We met with the administration on Wednesday and again on Monday. We exchanged proposals on Compensation, Benefits, Shared Governance, No Strike, Sabbaticals and Professional Development Leaves, Visiting Faculty, and Falk School Faculty.
On Compensation the administration made small improvements to their minimum salary proposal, including for the first time agreeing that visiting faculty and non-instructional part-time faculty would also have salary floors (those groups were excluded altogether in their previous proposals), but the floors they are proposing remain much too low. Guided by your responses in the bargaining survey, ensuring fair and professional salaries for the lowest paid Pitt faculty is a top priority for the bargaining committee. Along with being unfair, having a lower salary floor for some faculty would incentivize the administration to hire more faculty on those contracts. For these reasons we remain firm in our demand for a $60,000 salary floor for all full-time faculty in the bargaining unit.
In support of that goal, many faculty attended the Pink the Pitt women’s basketball game on Sunday and talked to hundreds of students, parents, alumni, and community members about the Pitt faculty members who earn significantly less than $60,000 per year, most of whom are women. Community members we talked to were surprised to learn that so many of our expert faculty earn so little, and strongly supported the need for Pitt to finally stand up and pay our faculty fairly.
- We talked to students, parents, alumni, and community members at the Pink the Pete women’s basketball game about our $60,000 salary floor proposal.
- The administration continues to drag its feet on Compensation, but we made more progress on Benefits and Shared Governance.
- We finalized three strong TAs on Sabbaticals and Professional Development Leaves, Visiting Faculty, and Falk School Faculty.
- We are stronger together. If you haven’t done so yet, sign a membership card and get involved to help us win fair pay.
Dear colleagues,
We met with the administration on Wednesday and again on Monday. We exchanged proposals on Compensation, Benefits, Shared Governance, No Strike, Sabbaticals and Professional Development Leaves, Visiting Faculty, and Falk School Faculty.
On Compensation the administration made small improvements to their minimum salary proposal, including for the first time agreeing that visiting faculty and non-instructional part-time faculty would also have salary floors (those groups were excluded altogether in their previous proposals), but the floors they are proposing remain much too low. Guided by your responses in the bargaining survey, ensuring fair and professional salaries for the lowest paid Pitt faculty is a top priority for the bargaining committee. Along with being unfair, having a lower salary floor for some faculty would incentivize the administration to hire more faculty on those contracts. For these reasons we remain firm in our demand for a $60,000 salary floor for all full-time faculty in the bargaining unit.
In support of that goal, many faculty attended the Pink the Pitt women’s basketball game on Sunday and talked to hundreds of students, parents, alumni, and community members about the Pitt faculty members who earn significantly less than $60,000 per year, most of whom are women. Community members we talked to were surprised to learn that so many of our expert faculty earn so little, and strongly supported the need for Pitt to finally stand up and pay our faculty fairly.
Comments to Pitt’s administration that we received from students, parents, and alumni who filled out an online survey include:
“Pitt faculty members are what make my education as valuable as it is. They deserve to be paid a wage that allows them to live comfortably.”
“I support a $60,000 full-time salary floor for ALL faculty members at the University of Pittsburgh!”
“Do right by your people!”
“The well-being of all Pitt faculty and staff is in my best interest as a student and a member of the community.”
“Shrink the gender wage gap!”
“Thats nuts pay them”
“Pay your professors and faculty - they do so much work and they deserve it”
Beyond the salary floor, the administration’s proposal on annual raises is stuck at less than 2% for 2023-2024 (4% as of the date of ratification, and the current fiscal year is more than half over), 2% for 2024-2025, and 2% for 2025-2026.
That is, they continue to demand that all of us work for salaries that don’t even begin to keep up with the cost of living. We think you will all agree that this is unacceptable, and we all need to keep pushing until the administration agrees to salary increases that are fair and sustainable (as well as retroactive to last July).
On Benefits, the administration proposed a more workable approach to calculating part-time faculty eligibility for health benefits, which allows us to focus on the specific thresholds for benefits eligibility, which is important progress. On Shared Governance they agreed for the first time to finally acknowledge our union as the exclusive bargaining representative for our wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of our work, as required by law, which finally allows us to move toward an agreement on this article.
Finally, we are very pleased to announce three important tentative agreements (TAs) on Sabbaticals and Professional Development Leaves, Visiting Faculty, and Falk School Faculty:
The Sabbaticals TA creates a major new program that allows full-time non-tenure stream faculty to apply for one-semester professional leave once every six years. This is a pilot that will start with up to fifty such leaves each year. We hope to increase the number in future contracts, but this establishes a significant program that begins to recognize the value and importance of NTS faculty work and the need for supporting ongoing professional development. This means that NTS faculty will have access to leaves to develop new skills, build their research and teaching portfolios, and work on projects that they cannot do while teaching or researching full-time. This article also protects the existing sabbatical system for tenured faculty, while ensuring that sabbatical credit accrues even if a faculty member’s sabbatical leave is delayed, fixing a longstanding concern with the current system.
The Visiting Faculty TA establishes a strong system for review of long-term visiting faculty, which will lead to the reclassification of many faculty who are doing continuing work into permanent roles. It also commits the administration to ongoing evaluation of the use of visiting faculty and review of individual visiting faculty classifications.
The Falk School TA creates additional job security and workload protections for all Falk School faculty. The administration has repeatedly tried to treat Falk School faculty differently from all other faculty in our union, but we successfully negotiated an article that ensures Falk School faculty have the same presumptive renewal protections that we won for everyone else, along with improved policies specific to the Falk School, including guaranteed breaks and limits to required work outside of the normal school day.
We meet with the administration next on February 20.
These TAs bring us significantly closer to a final contract, but it is clear that we still have a fight ahead with regard to pay. What you can do to help us win the pay we deserve is sign a membership card and get involved.
In solidarity,
Your bargaining committee
Tyler Bickford (chair), Professor, English, Oakland
Pete Bell, Teaching Assistant Professor, Chemistry, Oakland
Nicholas Bircher, Part-time Professor, Nurse Anesthesia, Oakland
Chloe Dufour, Faculty Librarian, ULS, Oakland
Anthony Fabio, Associate Professor, Epidemiology (Public Health), Oakland
Lech Harris (secretary), Part-time Instructor, English, Oakland
James Hill (archivist), Visiting Assistant Professor, History, Oakland
Megan O’Brien, Master Teacher, Falk Laboratory School, Oakland
Sabrina Robinson, Part-time Instructor, Slavic, Oakland
Evan Schneider, Assistant Professor, Physics and Astronomy, Oakland
Paul Scott, Assistant Professor, Health and Community Systems (Nursing), Oakland
Jeffrey Shook, Professor, Social Work, Oakland
Stacey Triplette, Associate Professor, Spanish, Greensburg
Abagael West, Teaching Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, Oakland
Links!
“Pitt faculty members are what make my education as valuable as it is. They deserve to be paid a wage that allows them to live comfortably.”
“I support a $60,000 full-time salary floor for ALL faculty members at the University of Pittsburgh!”
“Do right by your people!”
“The well-being of all Pitt faculty and staff is in my best interest as a student and a member of the community.”
“Shrink the gender wage gap!”
“Thats nuts pay them”
“Pay your professors and faculty - they do so much work and they deserve it”
Beyond the salary floor, the administration’s proposal on annual raises is stuck at less than 2% for 2023-2024 (4% as of the date of ratification, and the current fiscal year is more than half over), 2% for 2024-2025, and 2% for 2025-2026.
That is, they continue to demand that all of us work for salaries that don’t even begin to keep up with the cost of living. We think you will all agree that this is unacceptable, and we all need to keep pushing until the administration agrees to salary increases that are fair and sustainable (as well as retroactive to last July).
On Benefits, the administration proposed a more workable approach to calculating part-time faculty eligibility for health benefits, which allows us to focus on the specific thresholds for benefits eligibility, which is important progress. On Shared Governance they agreed for the first time to finally acknowledge our union as the exclusive bargaining representative for our wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of our work, as required by law, which finally allows us to move toward an agreement on this article.
Finally, we are very pleased to announce three important tentative agreements (TAs) on Sabbaticals and Professional Development Leaves, Visiting Faculty, and Falk School Faculty:
The Sabbaticals TA creates a major new program that allows full-time non-tenure stream faculty to apply for one-semester professional leave once every six years. This is a pilot that will start with up to fifty such leaves each year. We hope to increase the number in future contracts, but this establishes a significant program that begins to recognize the value and importance of NTS faculty work and the need for supporting ongoing professional development. This means that NTS faculty will have access to leaves to develop new skills, build their research and teaching portfolios, and work on projects that they cannot do while teaching or researching full-time. This article also protects the existing sabbatical system for tenured faculty, while ensuring that sabbatical credit accrues even if a faculty member’s sabbatical leave is delayed, fixing a longstanding concern with the current system.
The Visiting Faculty TA establishes a strong system for review of long-term visiting faculty, which will lead to the reclassification of many faculty who are doing continuing work into permanent roles. It also commits the administration to ongoing evaluation of the use of visiting faculty and review of individual visiting faculty classifications.
The Falk School TA creates additional job security and workload protections for all Falk School faculty. The administration has repeatedly tried to treat Falk School faculty differently from all other faculty in our union, but we successfully negotiated an article that ensures Falk School faculty have the same presumptive renewal protections that we won for everyone else, along with improved policies specific to the Falk School, including guaranteed breaks and limits to required work outside of the normal school day.
We meet with the administration next on February 20.
These TAs bring us significantly closer to a final contract, but it is clear that we still have a fight ahead with regard to pay. What you can do to help us win the pay we deserve is sign a membership card and get involved.
In solidarity,
Your bargaining committee
Tyler Bickford (chair), Professor, English, Oakland
Pete Bell, Teaching Assistant Professor, Chemistry, Oakland
Nicholas Bircher, Part-time Professor, Nurse Anesthesia, Oakland
Chloe Dufour, Faculty Librarian, ULS, Oakland
Anthony Fabio, Associate Professor, Epidemiology (Public Health), Oakland
Lech Harris (secretary), Part-time Instructor, English, Oakland
James Hill (archivist), Visiting Assistant Professor, History, Oakland
Megan O’Brien, Master Teacher, Falk Laboratory School, Oakland
Sabrina Robinson, Part-time Instructor, Slavic, Oakland
Evan Schneider, Assistant Professor, Physics and Astronomy, Oakland
Paul Scott, Assistant Professor, Health and Community Systems (Nursing), Oakland
Jeffrey Shook, Professor, Social Work, Oakland
Stacey Triplette, Associate Professor, Spanish, Greensburg
Abagael West, Teaching Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, Oakland
Links!
- If someone forwarded this to you, sign up to receive these emails
- Find previous bargaining updates here
- Status of bargaining
- Get in touch with your Council rep
- Get involved with the Communication and Action Team
- Request a digital membership card
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