The University of Michigan employs 1,500 non-tenured faculty. In 2013, while several top-level administrators were secretly given six-figure incentives, bonuses and pay supplements, unionized lecturers received no salary increase due to “budgetary constraints.” 

by Donna Iadipaolo

LECTURERS AND STAFF at the University of Michigan are voicing their support of and agreement with the 12 tenured faculty who, in April, wrote an Open Letter to Regents of the University, exposing what the faculty allege are out-of-control bonuses, secretive award methods, and other questionable practices.

“The lack of transparency is obvious, and intentional,” said Bonnie Halloran, LEO President. “The average citizen would be outraged that administrators at the University are getting huge bonuses, in addition to their base salaries. Deciphering the U of M budget is almost impossible, I believe by design.”

Halloran added that public accounting of university salaries used to be presented in order of pay so it was easy to identify the top paid individuals. Now this massive document is posted alphabetically, she noted, making it much harder to do overall salary comparisons.

“Again, I believe this opaqueness is by design,” said Halloran.

According to Halloran, lecturers, defined as non-tenured and non-tenure track faculty, are concentrated in introductory and general education courses, teaching about one-third of undergraduate credit hours.

“Our work is essential to the educational mission of the University, but we are the lowest paid faculty on the campus. Starting salaries for most Lecturers in LSA is between $33,300 – $35,300,” said Halloran. “The gap between Lecturer pay and administrative pay is obscene.”

She pointed out how, as reported in the Open Letter to the Regents, between 2005 and 2013 administrator’s base salaries increased by 48 percent. In contrast, between 2010-2013, contractual Lecturer raises in Ann Arbor averaged 1.9 percent, ranging between 0 percent to 2.75 percent.

“The administrators who bargain with our union over salary—who have higher salaries and get bigger raises—always say that the budget for the next three years is tight and that they cannot agree to larger raises…at least for us,” said Halloran. “It’s obvious that there is a double standard.”

She believes not only transparency, but limitations should be placed upon administrator salaries by the University of Michigan Board of Regents.

“Any easy first step would be more Regental oversight, including some policy controls over raises and bonuses,” said Halloran. “Part of the disparity comes about because the highest paid individuals are getting the biggest raises.”

As a concrete example, Halloran said that in 2011 the Dean of Engineering making $330,000 got a 29 percent raise while the typical engineering lecturer got a 2.5 percent salary increase that year.

“I would suggest the Regents consider some kind of differential raise mechanism, that would increase raise percentages for lower paid employees and reduce potential raise percentages for those with six-figure salaries,” stated Halloran.

Many University of Michigan staff members have similar concerns.

Jim Pyke is a Media Consultant and Scheduling Coordinator in the LSA Instructional Support Services. He has been employed by the University for the past twenty years.

Earlier this month Pyke wrote to History Professor Dario Gaggio for his “brave brave leadership effort toward bringing about positive change at our great university” in working with the dozen faculty members on the April Open Letter to the Regents of the University of Michigan.

“I am a lower level supervisor in the Instructional Support Services academic support unit within LSA, and I have in the past several years been especially bothered by seeing the large jumps in administrative salaries when positions change hands,” wrote Pyke to Gaggio. “Meanwhile the group of highly trained technical staff that I supervise are hired in below what one would consider a living wage for Ann Arbor, and we’ve had to push very hard to raise that entry level wage even just a little bit.”

In an interview with The Ann Arbor Independent, Pyke said those at the top have been enjoying huge salary increases, while staff members at the bottom do not earn the same percentage.

“Top administrative salaries continue to climb by great leaps and bounds, increasing by tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars from year to year,” said Pyke. “Meanwhile, other positions held by highly- skilled and committed people are essentially held fast to salary brackets that have changed very little over the decades that I have been aware of all this. For example, in five years the actual starting salary for a technician newly hired into my section of our unit has gone up only because of a great deal of hard work on the part of our management team, and even then by only about $3000.00 from about $28K to about $31K.”

Pyke believes it is important for all employees at the University and voice their concerns.

“I think it’s important to do what I can to support the efforts of those who speak up on behalf of others who may not be ‘oppressed,’ in this case, but I think we can safely say they are ‘less well-treated’ than others,” described Pyke. “In particular I think this is important to do on the local level where I think there is greater potential for a smaller number of people to have their voices heard and responded to than what is required at the state or national level.”

Pyke added that such inequity breeds discontent.

“This has a negative impact on morale as the people who are the ‘doers’—as differentiated from the ‘managers’ and the ‘leaders’ to use management training jargon—effectively, over time, drift further down economically relative to their most visible leaders within the University who are vastly elevated,” described Pyke.

Pyke said he is sometimes met with unsympathetic ears since much of corporate America has adopted similar practices. But Pyke contends an institution of public learning should act differently than profit-driven companies.

“The U of M should be working to improve our society,” argued Pyke. “Instead we are following the status quo of increasingly entrenched bad habits in corporate America that are fomenting the most extreme levels of economic inequality the world has ever seen, which in turn have created a dramatic shift in our government toward oligarchy—as indicated by the recently published Princeton University paper “Testing Theories of American Politics” by Gilens and Page.”

Pyke, too, has specific data points that seemed completely out of step.

“I first became aware specifically of what I would consider unreasonably inflated administrative salaries when the position of Provost for Academic Affairs changed hands from Teresa Sullivan, whose ending salary from 2009-2010 was $366K, to Philip Hanlon, whose starting salary was $470K in 2010-2011,” detailed Pyke. “This represented a 28 percent increase, which seemed not only kind of bizarre to me, but also, frankly, sexist. The sexism of this appears supported—if only by correlation—when one knows that the newest Provost, Martha Pollack, entered the position for the 2013-2014 year at $450K in spite of the fact that not only was Philip Hanlon’s starting salary $20K higher, his ending salary was $59K higher at $509K.”

The situation with the new President at the University of Michigan seems to follow a similar trend.

“Add to this already confusing, and perhaps distressing, picture the fact that Mary Sue Coleman’s ending salary for 2013-14 is $603K, while incoming President Mark Schlissel will be paid $750K, an instant raise of $147K,” said Pyke.

Like Dario Gaggio, Pyke’s belief is that fair income distribution would help the University and the public at large.

“The reason I am doing this interview is that while all the administrators in my own unit are very deeply invested in improving pay equity and job satisfaction according to the University of Michigan’s established policies and procedures, I think there are elements of those policies and procedures that are worth questioning both privately and publicly,” stated Pyke.

“Because of the strong position of valued leadership I have been fostered into within my unit, I feel personally empowered to speak up publicly in the hope of ultimately broadening support for the cause of reducing income inequality within the University, and, by extension, our state, our nation and the world into which our graduates go.”

He added that hard, valuable work should be rewarded at all levels.

“My unit is doing very well within the University, and I am by all definitions satisfied with my position,” said Pyke. “I think it is best, whenever possible, to work from such a position of satisfaction when one hopes to improve the circumstances of others who may justifiably not be as satisfied.”

Pyke also believes there is concrete action administrators could take.

“For example, what a powerful legacy the incoming president could create for himself if he very publicly refused the $750K salary he is being offered, and rolled it back to a ‘mere’ $500K,” proposed Pyke. “He could even go further to appoint a research group to find the lowest paid 250 employees of the University system and grant them an immediate $1000 raise—not a one time bonus, but a permanent raise. It could possibly be a kind of ‘shot heard round the world’ moment.

Pyke added that the public should be concern about these issues as well.

“The University of Michigan is a powerful force for development, growth and change in the world,” said Pyke. “It is essential that we recognize the impact we can and do have on the world outside our walls. It is equally essential that people who live and work outside the University community recognize the impact that the research and educational work we do here has on the State of Michigan, the United States, and even the world. If a movement to reduce income inequality does not begin at some point, it will likely put our nation and our standard of living in peril. We need to work together to fix the problems that are being created by economic inequality.”