University Times

Human Resources will provide the Staff Association Council (SAC) with more detailed information on staff salaries, but with the stipulation that the information remain confidential, according to SAC President Rich Colwell.

Colwell reported on the status of SAC’s request at last week’s Senate budget policies committee (BPC) meeting, as a follow-up to discussions at last month’s BPC meeting.

(See Sept. 28 University Times.)

He noted that each year HR benchmarks local and regional salaries to measure whether the top of Pitt’s staff salary ranges should be raised to reflect the market for comparable positions.

The process also is designed to protect those long-term staff members approaching the maximum salary allowable in their classification and who therefore are ineligible for raises, barring a successful appeal to the head of their responsibility center, he said.

“There was only one year in the last five when there were staff who hit their ceiling,” Colwell said. “For the last two years, the ranges have been increased close to the amount of the salary pool increase, which we’ve also been told each year.”

What will be new is the benchmarking data itself, Colwell said.

“HR has confirmed that for the first time we will be shown survey data on how ranges are set in the staff job classifications, and we will be getting data on the breakdown of the salary increase pool for staff,” Colwell said, although he added he was unclear in what format the latter data will be presented.

The information will be viewed only by SAC officers and the chair of the SAC benefits committee, Colwell said, with no opportunity to take notes or keep a copy of any data. “So the data will not be public; it will be confidential and I will not be able to comment on it, except at UPBC. I don’t really see that [the BPC] committee needs that information, but I do think UPBC needs to see that information.”

UPBC is the University planning and budgeting committee, a group of faculty, staff and administrators that makes confidential recommendations to the chancellor on salary increases for full-time staff and faculty.

Colwell thanked BPC members for raising issues of staff salaries with administrators at its Sept. 15 meeting, which, he said, lent support to SAC’s request.

The SAC president told BPC his group also had other salary policy concerns, including the faculty initiatives line item.

“There is one policy for faculty and staff, and under that policy all the money goes to salaries and cannot be used for other purposes,” Colwell noted. “But for a few years there has been a separate line item in the budget for faculty initiatives. The Staff Association Council feels that that is a deviation from the policy because now you have a separate pool for the faculty that you don’t have for staff.”

He said he has requested at UPBC a comparable line item for staff but that request has been denied.

BPC members asked if the faculty initiatives budget line item is flexible enough to include money for staff salaries.

Arthur Ramicone, vice chancellor for budget and controller and a chancellor’s liaison to BPC, explained that the line item funding is only for faculty salaries and programmatic enhancements.

“The academic initiatives money is not a big secret,” he said. “A subset of that money is specifically targeted for faculty salaries. This year that was half a percent. You can do the math: Something like $900,000-some is half of 1 percent of salary for faculty. The total line was $2 million, so that differential, approximately $1 million, went to the provost and the senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences to distribute for academic programmatic initiatives. Whether some of that makes its way into faculty salaries would depend on the initiative.”

Senate President John Baker said, “I think it’s important that the University have discretionary money. Some of the concerns we had included getting a report after the fact of how that money was distributed, but I understand that that occurs at UPBC.”

BPC chair Stephen Carr noted that his committee intends to invite the provost to report on the initiatives funding in executive session during the spring term.

Colwell also discussed findings from an analysis he commissioned of Pitt salaries and the Consumer Price Index of inflation over the past 10 years.

“What this shows is that people who are getting an increase for meeting standards are actually losing money, and those getting the full maintenance and merit raises are making only a little money,” Colwell maintained.

Carr asked for information on how staff who change jobs or classifications affects the overall staff salary picture.

“A large percentage of staff change jobs or classifications from year to year,” Carr said. “If that’s where salary increases occur, we want to be able to recognize that, which would then perhaps identify people who are not taking new jobs or changing classifications who might be unfairly disadvantaged.”

Colwell responded, “In the past we’ve been given, confidentially, the numbers of staff who move or change classifications. I can’t repeat the figures, but I will say it is surprising how high it is.

“For some people, long-term staff especially, the only way they can get a decent raise, with the raise pool being what it’s been the last few years, is to transfer from one job to another job. That’s a reflection on the high number of people who change jobs: People feel that’s the only way to make more money. There also are people leaving the University in a high number that is surprising, most of them probably to earn more money.”

Carr said, “There’s a value to have opportunities to be promoted from within, if you do your job, improve your skills and raise your classification, and I think that should be supported. There is also a value to the University to have long-term staff in a position. And although the job title might remain the same, everybody’s job that I know of at least has changed in its content and its knowledge-base and so on in the last several years. If there is a systematic problem [related to salary inequity] that can be identified, that should be addressed.”

He added that experience has taught him that examining salary data over time, instead of focusing on one year, is useful to identify trouble areas.

“I want to reiterate that I think the administration has done a great job,” Carr said. “Certainly, the last 10 years has been much better for faculty than the previous 15 years, most people would say. The question that I have is: Can we identify some group of people, not individuals, who are unfairly disadvantaged? They get merit recognition, they get maintenance and they still fall behind. It isn’t that they’re doing a bad job, or that their individual evaluations aren’t up to snuff, it’s because of limited pools over time that there is a structural negative influence.”

He added: “What I’m calling for is information. If we can identify those groups, that’s something we can call attention to and I think people [in the administration] would respond.”

Colwell said he or his designate would return to BPC and report on whether SAC is satisfied with the staff salary information that HR will be providing. “If it’s not the information we need, we will tell you,” he said.

BPC also heard a report from Ramicone on the athletics department budget. (See story starting on page 1.)

—Peter Hart