PSU’s letter re President Wilson’s sabbatical pay

Dear PSU members,

As we enter a new round of contract negotiations, we are excited to read that a committee working on behalf of the UMass Board of Trustees has endorsed former president Wilson’s sabbatical pay of $425,000 (see the attached Boston Globe article). Earning $25,000 a year more than President Obama, President Wilson presided over the accelerating privatization of the UMass system while student fees skyrocketed, staff and faculty salaries flat-lined, and the value of our benefits plunged. No UMass committee member disapproved of Wilson’s golden handshake.

What is truly encouraging to us are the words of Trustee Ruben King-Shaw, who asserted that the pay of the system’s individual chancellors is “far too low.” He argued that “we need to have a full action item on the agenda to address the way-below-market salaries,” while Board chairman James Karam added that “we’re competing in the real world.”

These sentiments could not come at a better time for our contract bargaining. After all, we work “in the real world,” and it’s inconceivable that the Board would even think of raising upper-management salaries without doing the same or more for the thousands of staff and faculty who actually provide the daily education and services which attract our ever-escalating numbers of students. In the UMB Professional Staff bargaining unit alone, we have 24 members working full-time earning less than $40,000 a year—about 9% and less of Wilson’s sabbatical salary—and more than a few of them are in the mid-to-low-thirties. We have 151 members working full-time earning less than $50,000 a year—about 12% and less of that sabbatical gift. So it’s difficult to imagine that the Board would consider addressing inequities in the stratosphere before dealing with those here on earth.

We have been encouraged by President Caret’s public calls for restoration of adequate state funding for public higher education. We only hope that the Board of Trustees is equally committed to that goal, and to the related goals of lowering student fees and restoring appropriate salary and benefit levels to our staff and faculty. These goals are even more pressing than “a full action item on the agenda to address the way-below-market salaries” of a few highly-paid administrators, or justifying the extravagant send-off for a former president. While past presidents are treated with white gloves, we do not expect to see our underpaid staff and faculty treated with increased parking fees, further benefit erosion, or anything less than fair wage increases.