University Times

Still paying for that summer vacation? Faculty and staff can look forward to annual pay increases in this month’s paychecks.

A 3 percent increase in the fiscal year 2006 salary pool for Pitt employees was announced by the Board of Trustees in July, following their approval of a $1.52 billion FY06 operating budget. (See July 21 University Times.)

Since then, Chancellor Mark Nordenberg has decided on how the 3 percent salary pool will be distributed within Pitt’s three-pronged salary increase structure.

This year, duplicating last fiscal year’s 3 percent increase breakdown, 1.5 percent is designated for salary maintenance for employees who had been performing satisfactorily; 1 percent for merit, market and equity adjustments, and 0.5 percent centrally allocated to address market and equity imbalances.

Salary increases for faculty and staff will be retroactive to July 1.

Nordenberg announced the salary pool breakdown in a July 27 campus update.

“Building a competitive salary structure has been a high institutional priority, and we have made measurable progress on many fronts,” Nordenberg stated.

He cited the period from FY 2002 to FY 2005, when Pitt’s average salary for associate professors rose from a rank of 21st to 12th among associate profs at the 34 Association of American Universities (AAU) public institutions, the core benchmark group, according to Pitt’s senior administration.

Similarly, average salaries for professors and assistant professors rose from 19th to 13th among AAU publics during that period, placing Pitt in the top half of AAU public institutions in those three faculty levels.

The ranking upswing for faculty librarians has been more modest, Nordenberg acknowledged, rising from 30th in FY02 to 26th in FY05 among AAU public institutions.

“We also do benchmark staff salaries every year and regularly adjust our ranges to maintain competitiveness in the various markets from which staff are recruited,” Nordenberg noted.

“We will not have access to full [FY06] comparative information for several months. However, from what we now know, it seems likely that the 3 percent pool will at least prevent salary slippage,” he maintained.

The chancellor said he accepted the recommendations of the University planning and budgeting committee, an advisory group chaired by the provost that includes administrative, faculty, staff and student representatives.

—Peter Hart