In a campus Town Hall meeting Monday, April 6, University of West Florida President Judy Bense said layoffs would be unavoidable if the state cut more than 7 percent of the budget, which is likely to happen.
In fact, the Pensacola News Journal reported cuts are expected to be between 7 and 12 percent.
Bense said there would be an emphasis on protecting instructional jobs and student services when those cuts are made.
This may be heartening for the UWF faculty and staff, who must be as preoccupied with job security as the rest of the workers in the U.S., if not more so. It seems lately that faculty members have been among the most “dispensable” employees in the state.
Bense also said UWF was financially sound, citing $1.6 million in recurring savings and a potential $4 million in federal stimulus money.
However, Bense said the money couldn’t be used for faculty raises since the $4 million is a non-recurring form of income, and, to be responsible, they needed to “keep what little savings we have right now and try to meet the reductions we expect next year.”
Makes sense, right? Well, apparently not to some people.
Rosemary Hays-Thomas, the president of the UWF chapter of the United Faculty of Florida union, said the administration is sending mixed signals and she didn’t understand why UWF isn’t able to give raises to the faculty.
“We know other campus administrations have negotiated raises for faculty,” Hays-Thomas said. “We just want to know why we can’t do it here, because the president just told us we’re in solid financial condition, given the circumstances.”
I am all for paying our faculty more, but I am befuddled by Hays-Thomas’ confusion. Why is she preoccupied with teachers being paid more when most of them are just concerned with keeping their jobs?
I am sure they would like a raise, and I am sure they would deserve one if they got it. But we all learn at one point or another that you don’t always get something just because you deserve it.
When Bense said the University is financially sound, given the circumstances, it sounded like we were lucky to have any savings at all.
Hays-Thomas is correct in saying other universities have negotiated raises for faculty; Florida Atlantic University budgeted a 1 percent across-the-board pay raise this past fall. But they only accomplished that after collecting $8.6 million for selling unused airwaves to a telecommunications company.
The fact that Hays-Thomas said the University is sending mixed signals is ludicrous. One point six million is paltry in comparison with the amount FAU received, and it’s all the savings the University has.
I am sure that, given a choice, most faculty members would rather hang on to the job they have, at the income they receive, than have their job consolidated as FAU chose to do to accommodate those pay raises.
Randy Goin, chief of staff at FAU, said it was an “attempt to maintain a level of service while reducing personnel.
”But they also negotiated a 10-percent raise for FAU President Frank Bogan, giving him an additional $32,000 for doing the same job. How horrifying.
Bense seems to be looking at the big picture, and, being a former professor at UWF, I’m sure she doesn’t take faculty reductions lightly.
Also, she specifically said emphasis would be placed on protecting instructional jobs. If those jobs needed protecting, that is more important than placing added strain on the University by demanding more money.
As I said, I’m all for paying our faculty more. They deserve as much as they want, in my opinion. But the state doesn’t seem to care about them even having a job, much less being given a raise.
If I were a teacher in this economy, I would want someone protecting my job before I worried about getting more money.
3 comments
Though you make a good point in stating the author seems misinformed regarding Dr. Hays-Thomas's quote, nowhere does she state that she does not feel teachers deserve a raise. In fact, at the end of her article she says very plainly that she is "all for" a raise, but doesn't see that as a possibility given the current financial circumstances. It does not seem to me that she feels teachers are greedy, only that before expecting a raise they should be happy to have a job. There are many teachers and professors in Florida that will not have a job to come back to next year, much less a raise, and it seems Ms. Palmer was just trying to point out that paying faculty members more money is not necessarily feasible at the current time, and from what I have seen in the economy, they won't have much luck elsewhere. I don't think that justifies the lack of compensation, but institutions do the best they can, and so do faculty members. It has been my experience at UWF that although they wish to get paid more, faculty want to make a difference in the lives of students even more. And they can't do that if they don't even have a job.