Merit pay report finds no bias

By John Caldwell
Daily Forty-Niner

Negotiations over salary increases continue into October as California State University faculty members fight to eliminate merit-based raises from their existing contract.

"Last year the bargaining was difficult," said CSU Chancellor Charles Reed. "But we have a contract. I believe that when you do that you need to honor that fully."

The negotiations began early this year when the California Teacher's Association exercised its right to re-open its contract.

The CFA is concerned about a potential bias associated with faculty merit increases, and is claiming the system is inefficient. But the Chancellor's Office supports the merit pay program, which provides raises to those faculty members who exhibit high performance.

"Every respected college and university in this country has merit pay," Reed said. "That's good enough for me."

An independent report commissioned by the Chancellor's Office Sept. 20 concluded there is no significant bias in the merit system. This, however, conflicts with a report issued by the CFA.

"The National Education Association concluded there was a statically significant bias," said Hamdi Bilici, president of the CFA at Cal State Long Beach.

The CFA proposed putting its findings with those of the CSU and giving them to a third party, Bilici said, but that was never done.

Bilici explained that large proportions of part- and full-time lecturers are female.

"There is a very significant bias among lecturers," Bilici said. "They make up about half the faculty."

The study issued by the chancellor's office concluded that women faculty in 1998 and 1999 had a combined average merit pay increase of 2.67 percent compared to 2.44 percent for men. Bilici is concerned that the data provided by the CSU for the study is incomplete, and does not include lecturers who do not request or qualify for merit awards.

Another concern among faculty is the bureaucracy associated with the merit increase system. Not only does it fall short of inflation, but also an ocean of forms, meetings and data entry holds up paychecks for months, Bilici said.

A 6 percent pay increase has been held up by the negotiations. The CFA wants to impose a moratorium on all faculty merit increases, which make up 40 percent of raises, and bunch them with cost of living increases.

"Nothing would make me happier than to put the pay increase into affect" Reed said. "We will make it retroactive to July 1st if we can just get an agreement with the CFA."

Following an impasse in face-to-face negotiations over the summer, a state mediator moved the negotiations into a fact-finding stage. A three-member panel will convene in October to consider evidence in the dispute.

The Chancellor recently used a provision in the contract to implement the administration's last offer to the CFA, forcing faculty to calculate merit increases before the fact-finding panel holds its hearing.

"It's upsetting the faculty," said Marty Fiebert, CFA representative for the College of Liberal Arts. "We were not prepared to evaluate these reports and think about merit pay."

The CFA union is recommending the faculty equally divide the merit decisions at the department level, Fiebert said.

"The irony is we are suppose to start negotiating the next contract very soon," Bilici said. "And we don't even have an agreement on the re-opener negotiations."