CSU reviews contract offer from CFA

By Ryan May
Daily Forty-Niner

In the latest round of the merit pay issue, the California State University Chancellor's Office reviewed an offer from the California Faculty Association Thursday, allowing merit pay to continue for another year under certain conditions.

The stipulation, newly added to the agreement between CSU and the CFA, would then suspend merit pay the following year while the system is reviewed by a third party, said Hamdi Bilici, CFA president at Cal State Long Beach.

According to Bilici, the current system has no accountability, contains gender bias and is faulty and unclear.

"If you can control the pay, you can control the faculty," Bilici said. "If you can control the faculty, then academic freedoms start disappearing."

In the system of merit pay, each faculty member's performance is initially reviewed by other members of their department.

"The main criteria for merit pay is teaching," said Ken Swisher a spokesman for the Chancellor's Office. "And who better to review faculty than their peers?"

Swisher denied that any gender bias takes place and pointed to an outside study conducted by Resolution Economics in which merit pay slightly favors women.

In the study, released through the Chancellor's Office, women in 1998 and 1999 received an average merit pay increase of 2.67 percent compared to 2.44 percent for men, though the study called the difference insignificant.

Calling the merit pay system individualized, Bilici further stated that the quality of education might decrease as faculty members focus on personal projects, leaning away from working as a whole within their department.

Further, he questioned the use of funds left over as faculty resign or retire.

"Over the last 10 years or so, CSU has skimmed, according to some numbers, up to $100 million that should have gone to faculty members for salary but was used for other purposes."

However, Swisher said that money was never skimmed. Further, all leftover funds, known as salary savings, are used in the search and hiring process to replace faculty, a practice Swisher called standard in any business.

"Faculty union can't point to one faculty member who didn't receive the salary increase they were entitled to," Swisher said. "[Merit pay] awards outstanding performance. Those that go the extra mile for the students deserve to be rewarded and compensated for that extra effort."