Colleagues,
We have received a number of inquiries about when faculty might expect to receive our merit raises for this year, and at this point, it appears that they will be in our November pay at the earliest. Rest assured that we all will receive our full amount, but part of the delay stems from a combination of the need to have a joint Akron-AAUP and administration market adjustment and salary compression committee and the lack of support staff in institutional research to help provide that committee with the information required to make the allocations.
You may recall that a part of this year’s (0.25%) faculty raise allotment is an adjustment pool for market adjustment and salary compression (our total raise pool is 4%; 1.5% is an across-the-board increase for all those judged at least as “satisfactory” and 2.25% is based on merit evaluations). As specified in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), half of the market compression money is allocated by formula, based statistically on benchmark salaries for each individual. Akron-AAUP (represented by Katie Stoynoff and John Zipp) and the administration (represented by Mike Cheung and Kevin Kreider) worked collaboratively to allocate the formula-driven half of the funds which you will see on the spreadsheets that HR provides.
We just finished this part of the allocation, and once your unit receives these spreadsheets your job is to allocate the other half, based on each individual’s full history of documented performance, which cannot be determined statistically but instead requires deliberation at the local academic unit level as specified in the CBA (the Chair/Director in consultation with at least two bargaining unit members of the department/school).
As you decide how to allocate your academic unit’s market adjustment/compression dollars, consider the following:
-
The benchmark salaries are based on a statistical analysis of salaries at peer institutions. For professors, a years-in-rank modifier is included so that individuals with more experience have a higher benchmark salary.
-
The benchmark represents an average. More productive faculty should, in principle, have salaries above the benchmark.
-
It is expected that each individual will receive a different allocation; indeed, it is possible that some individuals will receive nothing from this pool, while others will receive a substantial amount.
-
A brief rationale is required when your department/school/college submits the market adjustment fund distributions to describe the process you used to determine the allocations and to ensure adequate consideration of the full performance history at UA of each individual affected. Beyond choosing a method that reflects the full performance history of each affected faculty member, the details, weightings, etc. are up to the unit committees; rationality, not uniformity, between units is what is important here.
Thank you,
Akron-AAUP Communications Committee