Here's what ASPRO sent out, FYI:
Doyle Prepared to Divide Academic Staff
According to Governor Jim Doyle, some of you are just more worthy than others.
At Tuesday’s meeting of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Employment Relations (JCOER), Doyle’s appointee, Jennifer Donnelly, announced that she would be back before the Committee in December with a pay plan recommendation for faculty and instructional and research academic staff.
All indications from Doyle’s staff and UW System staff are that Doyle plans to give faculty and Category B academic staff (instructors and researchers) an additional salary increase. Category A academic staff (those not teaching or researching) would not get the additional bump.
This is the same proposal that prompted the creation of ASPRO more than 20 years ago.
For some reason, the Governor believes that an assistant professor of Portuguese at UWM is more important to the undergraduate experience than a student’s advisor or the Director of Financial Aid.
How could the Governor argue that giving an additional salary boost to an academic staff research scientist, but not to the academic staff member who directs the campus’ economic development efforts somehow helps the State’s economy? Let’s face it, without the Category A academic staff member who writes the grants or manages the lab, the researcher would not be able to conduct world-renowned research.
If you are an instructor or a researcher, this plan sounds pretty good and it would be – in the short term. In the long term, this division of the academic staff will lead to more divisiveness. Next time, don’t be surprised if those scientists engaged in politically acceptable research will receive higher salary increases than those toiling on research that the general public does not understand. And it will be easier to propose that teaching academic staff should not get the same salary increases as their faculty colleagues.
To stop Governor Doyle from implementing this proposal, academic staff must act NOW. Email or call the Governor’s office to express your opposition to a salary boost that excludes some academic staff. See the contact information in the sidebar on how to contact the Governor.
Make yours personal, but include the message that “As an academic staff member who is a (your position) at (which campus), I oppose any effort to give a salary raise to faculty and some, BUT NOT ALL, academic staff.”
Please share this Alert with all of your colleagues. We need to flood the Governor’s office with calls and emails to stop the unfair treatment of the academic staff.
ASPRO recognizes that all academic staff contribute to the educational experience of students and help maintain the stellar reputation of the
