By Crystal FambriniAssistant City Editor
The California Faculty Association and the California StateUniversity system are butting heads once again over money.
The CSU currently awards its 20,000 faculty general pay increasesas well as faculty merit incentives. However, there is a catch. Notall faculty receive FMI — something the CFA wants changed.
The FMI was implemented in 1995 and has always been a stickingpoint in negotiations between the CFA and CSU.
In April 1997, an independent organization found that the CSUfaculty make about 11 percent less than faculty at comparableuniversities. Both sides immediately recognized that there was aproblem.
A three-year contract was struck to help close the gap, but awindow was left open in the contract which allows for salary andbenefits to be negotiated annually. In 1998-99 there was a general5.7 percent increase and in 1999-00 the overall general increase roseto 11.7 percent. The contract expires June 2001.
CFA is proposing to take FMI and use them for across-the-boardincreases.
However, spokesman for the CSU system Ken Swisher said FMI willstay.
“We believe outstanding faculty should be awarded and faculty thatdon’t perform well shouldn’t,” he said. “We have gone back to themwith various proposals to make changes in various ways sincediscussions have been going on.”
But he said no matter how CSU proposed to change the system, CFAdidn’t buy it.
“We are willing to make changes to the system but we are committedto a merit system,” he said.
Rolf Schulze, president of the California Faculty Association atSDSU, said CFA wants to work with the CSU. Forty percent of SDSU’s2000 faculty are members of the CFA union. Schulze said the problemis that the FMIs, which he calls discretionary pay, is oftenunrelated to teaching and based mostly on research and gettingpublished — how much a professor is doing outside of the university.
“We would like to see a general salary increase and then study themerit pay idea to see if there is some way to improve the system sothat genuine merit can be awarded,” he said. “If the mission of CSUis teaching, then teaching ought to be at the top more than any othercontribution.”
Swisher said the CSU puts teaching at the forefront, however,Schulze argues that it’s just rhetoric.
Schulze said the CSU favors publishing because it gives morevisibility to the system.
“They have a culture toward publishing, they should not pretend tobe primarily a teaching institution,” Schulze said. “Many faculty areextremely unhappy and feel (merit pay) is a slap in the face.”
He said the contract setting basic FMI requirements has teachingin every category and that teaching is the main issue.
“We are a teaching-based institution and that’s why our facultyhave a bit of a heavier teaching load than others because theresearch expectations are lower,” he said.
Swisher also hinted that the blame might not be being directedtoward the right people by saying, “the merit pay process begins withrecitation with faculty peers, so it’s the faculty that’s makingthese recommendations.”
Closing the gap
The faculty-salary gap is based on a comparative group that seeksout institutions similar to the overall make-up of the 23 CSUs and isbased on about 20 universities, Swisher said. Colorado StateUniversity, Arizona State University and the University of SouthernCalifornia are among them.
Swisher said it is the highest two-year increase by the CSU inmore than 10 years.
The CSU is offering a 6 percent increase for 2000-01, Swishersaid, thus cutting the salary gap from 11 percent to less than 1percent.
Before FMI was introduced, faculty relied on the salary step scalefor pay increases — a seven-step program where faculty get anincrease each year, then max out at the top.
This system is still in effect and Swisher argues that FMI isneeded to get an additional increase.
United we stand, divided we fall
Faculty are evenly divided on this issue.
Leilani Grajeda-Higley, lecturer’s representative to the CFA, saidshe believes merit pay is divisive.
“It doesn’t fit the model of education because how do you qualifywhat you’re doing?” she said. “It can be 10, 20 years down the roadbefore students see what the impact was on them with their education.And maybe someone is getting merit pay because at the moment they arelooking good.
“My job is to impart knowledge and to inspire people to rise tothe best they can be. How the heck do you qualify that with meritpay?”
She said the issue with FMI is that it goes through so many stagesto get approved (six total) that by the time it reaches the finalstage, it is less about the person and more about the paperwork. Eventhen, she said, after the hours the faculty have put in applying forthe FMI if they aren’t approved, they can go through a rebuttalprocess.
“It takes so long,” she said. “The message I have been gettingfrom people up and down the state is that they don’t even know whatthey are making anymore.”
She said some faculty believe in a theory that others figure outhow to shine and look good. They may not merit any more pay thananyone else but they know how to play the game, and therefore receivethe money.
Robert Frantz, SDSU economic professor and former union member,said he doesn’t agree with the union’s opposition to merit pay. Hesaid FMIs encourage faculty to work harder.
“The way the system works is that if you are tenured and are afull professor you teach three classes, and you do some universityservice, and that’s all that’s expected of you,” he said. “There’s noexternal incentive to work very hard if you are a tenured fullprofessor. Once you get to the top step you can cruise for the restof your life if you want to do that.”
But Frantz said FMI provides an incentive to stop cruising.
“There are some people who work really hard and there are somepeople who just free ride off of other people,” he said. “And if theywant a free ride, if they want to stay home, spend time on theinternet, tend their garden, sit at the beach, that’s fine. But theyought not get the same money that people here every day who spendtheir time teaching, publishing and doing hard committee work. It’sjust that simple.”
Allegations of discrimination
SDSU has between around 1,900 faculty and half are lecturers,Schultz said. The majority of lecturers are women, yet women fallbehind men in higher positions with three-fourth of the CSU full-timeprofessor positions occupied by men. The CFA believes that there isclear diminution of awards to female faculty and has brought up theissue of possible gender-discrimination lurking in the CSU system.
Swisher said the issue of merit-pay has been “clouded withgender-discrimination,” that it is not the case and the CSU hired aprofessional labor economist to do an objective report. The analysison the CSU merit pay program found that there is no gender biasagainst women systemwide or at any individual campus.
“The report showed that if anything, merit pay slightly favorswomen,” Swisher said.
He said that most faculty are between 50 and 60 years of age andwere hired in the ’60s when there were more men in the field.Therefore, most senior faculty are largely male and the highest rankbecause they have been with the CSU system longer and, thus, skewsany statistics about merit pay.
“People can look at things different ways,” he said.
Schulze agreed to disagree, saying, “it is always true thatstatistics don’t lie but liars can use statistics.”
Always an exception
Grajeda-Higley said lecturers are a special case in regards toFMI.
“I think of lecturers as the migrant workers of higher education,”she said, saying that lecturers have no job security.
As a result, she said she believes that many lecturers areactually afraid to rock the boat.
With the service salary i
ncreases, faculty are eligible for raisesafter every 21 units of classes they teach and are eligible for meritpay annually.
Grajeda-Higley said the SSI and FMI should be combined so facultyhave to be doing their job or they don’t get anything or can’t teach.
“It’s all a game with money,” she said. “And money is powerprinted on paper. So one of the things merit pay does is makes peoplestand around and peck on each other to get more of the power.”
Will it ever end?
“I hope we can get this done as soon as possible,” Swisher said.”In February we normally start the negotiations for the next contractso the sooner we reach an agreement, the better.”
The CSU and CFA are in the fact-finding phase of negotiations andare waiting for their neutral fact finding panels to come back withrecommendations. CSU Chancellor Charles Reed will then look at bothreports and can accept or reject whatever he sees fit.
The CSU and CFA did agree on one thing — that a decision shouldbe reached within a month.
