Voluntary workload/pay reduction

[pedanticromantic]

If your university asked you if you would consider reducing your workload and pay, but leave it up to you to propose how that might happen, what do you see as the best options?

[arcturus]

First, I am sorry to hear that your university is in such financial difficulties that they are starting to discuss these options. Second, to the extent possible, remind your administrators that your job is a combination of teaching, research, and service, so reduction in formal teaching load should not be pro-rated just by the number of courses that you teach. Mentoring undergraduate and graduate students also should count in the teaching load. So, for example, if you are teaching 3-3, and they want to reduce that to 2-2 with a pay cut, it should not be a 33% cut, but perhaps 20% since you are still mentoring students, conducting research, and completing your service duties. I would actually argue for even less of a cut, starting at 5-10% to allow space for negotiations.

Sadly, the stories I have heard regarding furloughs during the 2008-09 recession usually involved less pay for the same amount of work. Statements like, you cannot take a furlough on the days/times that you teach. Your classes must continue as originally planned. And your research must continue at the same level as before, or you will not be eligible for further funding. And, yes, of course you must complete all of your assigned service duties. If you don't do so, the department/school/university will no longer function. But, also, you must not come to work for the equivalent of 1 day a week and your pay will be 20% less due to the furlough.

I hope your situation will work out better than the above. Best of luck!

[pedanticromantic]

Thank you for the sympathies. Frankly, we never should have relied so heavily on Chinese student money.
What you describe is my fear--they won't want to reduce teaching load because they are laying off the contract instructors, so they need us to teach, but if I reduce research then I won't be competitive for grants. So it's more work, less pay.

[polly_mer]

Any way you slice it will likely be same work for less pay.

Your task is to figure out a personal way to ensure you don't end up with dramatically more tedious work for less pay.

Now might be a good time to decide your personal interest in each task and what is the best option for your next job.

[Parasaurolophus]

I've heard of people at my university quietly being asked to take significantly more students in their summer and fall sections (without extra pay, of course). That's against union regs, so some kind of stink is being raised and it sounds like the practice has stopped for now. Doing so would have been one way to dramatically cut down on the number of sections being taught, which would have meant unemployment for those of us further down the union ladder.

Research doesn't enter into my pay at all, so I could only cut teaching and service, and given my status, service doesn't really enter into it either. Since I presumably couldn't cut instructional hours or office hours, the only place to cut would be marking. Since my assessment structures are strictly set by the university, I think the only way to manage the cut would be to make things very easy to mark. Since my stuff is already easy to mark (and mostly marked automatically by the LMS)... I dunno. Same work, less pay, I guess. =/

[Anon1787]

When it happened to us during 2008-9, the furlough involved a pay cut in exchange for a reduced number of class meetings during the semester, but the course was expected to cover the same amount of material. This meant that students were expected to learn more on their own.

In practice, it produced no significant reduction in my grading workload and less learning by students.

[mahagonny]

If your university asked you if you would consider reducing your workload and pay, but leave it up to you to propose how that might happen, what do you see as the best options?

Fewer courses, fewer students, and less pay is an everyday possibility when you have my job.

[Kron3007]

Fortunately I am not in that situation (yet), but to me this is he type of situation where this would be acceptable and I would be willing to suck it up for the team.  In fact, I would likely be willing to take a temporary pay cut to prevent staff/sessional layoffs.  I feel very fortunate to have a stable job through all of this.

I would probably write it in on some of the non-essential service items I do, but otherwise I would accept that we are all in a tough situation that calls for sacrifice.  Of course, as I said, this has not been asked of me so perhaps I would react different if presented with it.

[TreadingLife]

If your university asked you if you would consider reducing your workload and pay, but leave it up to you to propose how that might happen, what do you see as the best options?

Is this instead of having a reduction in employer matches to retirement contributions? Or in addition to such cuts? Some faculty would rather see TIAA-CREF matches go to the wayside before salary cuts. It is a trade-off of short-term losses vs longer-term losses. One is a loss you feel in the paycheck immediately vs. unrealized gains down the line.

[pedanticromantic]

If your university asked you if you would consider reducing your workload and pay, but leave it up to you to propose how that might happen, what do you see as the best options?

Is this instead of having a reduction in employer matches to retirement contributions? Or in addition to such cuts? Some faculty would rather see TIAA-CREF matches go to the wayside before salary cuts. It is a trade-off of short-term losses vs longer-term losses. One is a loss you feel in the paycheck immediately vs. unrealized gains down the line.

Oh they already reduced their matching of contributions, even before the crisis hit.  So we've already effectively taken a pay cut this year.

[Liquidambar]

My coworker thinks that furloughs would be better than a pay cut because at least our base salary would be intact for future years.  Does that sound valid?

[arcturus]

My coworker thinks that furloughs would be better than a pay cut because at least our base salary would be intact for future years.  Does that sound valid?

Yes. Both are bad, but a salary reduction is permanent .

[arcturus]

Apologies for the double post, but I wanted to add that the salary reduction is also bad because you will need a larger percentage pay raise to recover from the percentage pay cut. To illustrate, consider starting with a base salary of $50k. A 10% pay cut yields a salary of $45k. However, a 10% raise from there only returns to $49.5k. You'd need an 11.11% pay raise to return to the base salary you started with before the pay cut.  It is never a good idea to give up the base!

[pedanticromantic]

I agree. On the one hand, I'm glad to have a job, on the other hand, I fought hard and worked decades (!) of overtime hours to get my degrees and get to where I am, and I don't want to give up any pay. Governments are handing out money hand-over-fist to corporations, but not to education?  Seriously, WTF? Why are we even running universities like businesses to begin with. They're not a line item on government expenses. They are investments in the future.  The drive for perpetual growth to copy the neo-liberal market agenda (along with chronic underfunding) has caused this problem, not faculty salaries.

[polly_mer]

The problem is that universities don't run like businesses.

Many colleges don't run like good non-profits, either.

More institutions would be better off now had they spent the past ten years retooling for either good business or good non-profit practices.