CSU, faculty disagree on merit pay

By Ana Tintocalis, On-Line Forty-Niner

Tuesday, November 3, 1998

With no agreement in sight for a new contract, the California Faculty Association has put the heat on the California State University system by refusing to back down on one of the key issues at the center of the current negotiations dispute: merit pay.

Merit pay, also known as the PSSI program, was first implemented in 1995 by the CSU administration and is designed to financially reward selected faculty members at academic institutions for work done in their professional fields.

While the CFA and CSU agree that rewarding faculty members for their hard work is beneficial, the two parties fiercely disagree on the purpose of such a system and how this type of reward should be distributed.

The CFA's position concerning merit pay is that it is an unfair system that pits equally deserving professors against each other. "How can they [CSU administrators] pick and choose a few members among all faculty members that all do an extremely good job?," asked Hamdi Bilici, Cal State Long Beach CFA president. "How are they going to select those people and what are the criterion?"

The CFA has contended that any decision to grant additional pay for meritorious work be made at the department level rather than the administrative level.

"The current system does not encourage the faculty to work together," said Jack Munsee, CSULB retired physics professor. "It's poor for worker morale ... It's saying that the worth of this is greater than the worth of that."

The CFA has proposed to end the current system and implement a revised program that would compensate faculty based on a performance review by their peers.

Under the new contract, the CFA would like to have merit pay be made part of a present peer-review committee known as the Retention Tenure Promotion program, which it feels would provide a stronger department voice, due process and reasoned judgment.

The CFA believes the faculty will only support a fair merit pay with a more influential faculty voice.

"The CSU has got to realize that it can't tell faculty members that they're not doing a good job," Bilici said.

Another problem CFA officials have with selective merit increases is that it fosters the false belief that faculty members are motivated by financial rewards, rather than by peer acknowledgment of their work.

At the other end of the dispute, the CSU believes the PSSI program is an important way to reward outstanding faculty, and it is critical to the CSU's responsibility to be accountable to the people of California.

"This [merit pay] is the greatest way to compensate faculty for their performance," said Ken Swisher, CSU media relations manager.

The CSU's proposal for the PSSI program under the new contract states that it would double the amount of the salary pool -or funds allocated to faculty salaries - allotted for merit pay in order to reward almost three times as many faculty members.

Although the CFA has said its plan for a new merit pay program has not been acknowledged, the CSU claims it has already made efforts to rework the current system, Swisher said.

"We've already revised it," Swisher said. "Merit pay is now more faculty directed and flexible for campuses to do the process more independently."

CSU officials are also quick to point to other academic institutions that have merit pay programs which are similar to the universities within the CSU system.

Although the CFA does agree that most institutions do have some type of merit or discretionary pay, it says that it is untrue that these universities allocate a majority of their pay increases on the basis of merit.

The CFA contends that pay increases for faculty members at these institutions are intended to adjust with the cost of living and to maintain a competitive salary structure.

"Basically anything that requires subjective opinions of someone is going to be unfair to other faculty members," Bilici said. "It's unfair because we have dedicated faculty members that all sacrifice their days and nights to do the best job they can for their students."