By SUSAN JONES
Two Senate committees are in agreement that faculty salary equity reports based on race and gender should be combined and be issued more frequently.
Ally Bove, co-chair of the Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Discrimination Advocacy (EIADAC) committee, told the Budget Policies committee on Feb. 22 that EIADAC is interested in having the two reports combined — each currently is issued every three years on different cycles by the provost’s office — so they can look at the intersection of race and gender.
“Because those reports are done separately, we can't really see if there is an additive effect of being not only a woman faculty, but a black woman faculty,” Bove said.
EIADAC also did benchmarking against local and national peer institutions on the frequency of the reports.
“We looked both at the other state-related institutions within Pennsylvania, as well as the other four-year institutions within Allegheny County, and mostly found intermittent to no reporting, so we're doing better than all of those institutions,” Bove said.
But when they looked at schools in the Association of American Universities (AAU), they found “generally our faculty salary equity reporting is not as readily available or as frequent.”
EIADAC is proposing that the combined report be issued every two years. “From an equity standpoint, when you're only getting data every three years, it's kind of hard to see if you're making improvement,” Bove said.
Then on the alternating years, the committee would like to see a staff salary equity report, which would be handled by the Office of Human Resources. Bove said the committee has been in discussions with Staff Council, which in turn has been talking to HR. Her impression is there is general interest in doing regular staff salary equity reports, but other issue like compensation modernization and the recent reclassification of some employees from exempt to non-exempt are taking priority.
Amanda Brodish, associate vice provost for data analytics, compiles the faculty salary reports and said that her office has long advocated for combining the gender and race reporting.
“That's what we wanted to do and we were told by the former chair of the (Budget) committee to continue our approach of having two separate reports. So I'm very much in support of combining it as one report,” Brodish said. “And by combining it as one report, that's a time savings, so then doing the report every other year, rather than every third year, would not be a big deal.”
She said she’d be happy to work with HR on the staff equity report, but couldn’t speak for them on the availability of staff salary data.
James Gallaher, vice chancellor for human resources, said HR is reviewing the faculty report to determine if a similar report can be produced for staff positions.
The Budget Policies committee voted unanimously to request the faculty salary report every other year. The committee will seek input from HR on getting a staff salary equity report.
FLSA reclassifications
The budget committee also discussed the recent reclassification of some Pitt staff from exempt from overtime pay (or salaried) to non-exempt (or hourly).
The reclassifications were made after Human Resources did a review following the compensation modernization updates last year of where positions fall under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. About 800 Pitt employees were impacted.
Juan Taboas, chair of the committee and associate professor of dental medicine, said he’s heard that some responsibility centers did not consult with the employee’s direct supervisor before making the reclassification. “That leads to a potential misclassification,” he said.
In addition, supervisors are responsible for working with employees who were switched from salaried to hourly to figure out any overtime they may be owed from work over the past two years.
“It really creates a conflict environment between the staff and the supervisor, trying to figure out something that was never documented,” Taboas said. “Plus, there's the question of where does this money come from to cover these past years? You cannot bill that to any granting agency I've ever heard of.”
Human Resources's Gallaher said that, “Responsibility centers are responsible for covering any look-back payments for impacted employees in grant-funded positions.”
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
Have a story idea or news to share? Share it with the University Times.