WMU’s gaslighting email to employees about compensation

a negotiation message from WMU-AAUP president, Dr. Cathryn Bailey

I want to draw your attention to the negotiation message I posted earlier this week that included a summary of the WMU-AAUP Chapter compensation proposal and our holistic rationale for it. To recap: We have proposed robust, double-digit compensation increases after years of sacrifice that have threatened WMU’s ability to serve students, and brought a precipitous decline in our standard of living. As I shared our proposal with you, I predicted that the WMU Administration would cry poverty and, perhaps, try to paint WMU faculty members as greedy or selfish. And, sure enough, in a campus-wide email message sent later that same afternoon, the WMU Administration did exactly that. Offering faculty a paltry compensation increase of 2.75%, the Administration claimed that the Chapter proposal would effectively break WMU’s bank, and even harm students. We WMU employees are, if the Administration is to be believed, some combination of selfish and delusional in expecting to get our compensation levels up even to 2016 levels (which is effectively what’s in the WMU-AAUP proposal). I can also share that, at the table, the WMU Administration suggested that our proposal was insincere. Apparently, it is so inconceivable to them that employees might demand meaningful raises that they thought we might be joking.

In any case, I could so easily predict the Administration’s response to the Chapter proposal not because I’m psychic, but because this is the same song and dance they’ve performed ad nauseam, when employees—collectively, but often individually as well—have asked for more resources (including, for example, professional travel funds, staff support, student support, and on and on). Despite objective evidence that Western sits on impressive financial reserves—and has for years—the WMU Administration repeatedly trots out weak justifications for why, yet again, the university cannot afford to properly compensate or appropriately resource employees. Indeed, rather than investing consistently in its core mission, the Administration’s approach over the years has been to hoard, as if the goal were to maximize profit rather than responsibly run a diverse, equitable, inclusive and sustainable public university.

Maybe employees can expect more next year, the Administration suggests, maybe when enrollment is even better, or when State appropriations are even bigger, but not yet, never now. Such excuse-making functions as a form of gaslighting, as we watch these same administrators spend lavishly on so many things, including themselves. As we WMU employees grieve the loss—and absorb the work—of colleagues fleeing to other jobs or into early retirement, of course many of us have lost faith in the Administration’s will or ability to responsibly steward our university. Unless the WMU Administration assumes employees are dim or gullible, why do they keep insisting we rely on their word rather than the evidence before our own eyes, including that provided to us by reputable external financial and healthcare analysts? That some key WMU Administrators are the ones who are “out of touch” is confirmed by their indifference to chronic employee sacrifice since, as they have claimed at the table, elite administrators also have more work now than they used to.

Perhaps if WMU employees had not already endured relentless Administrative excuse-making and broken promises over the years—often based on shell games with the budget—we could be expected to be more trusting and patient. Evidently, such credulity is what President Montgomery and his negotiation team expect from us since in their Tuesday compensation message, they didn’t even bother to address substantive employee concerns. These familiar concerns include, for example, money spent on Administrative compensation, corporate consultants and law firms, and WMU’s apparently open-ended willingness to subsidize Division I football. Again, the Administration seems to be relying on us employees—many of whom are critical thinkers as a matter of professional competence—to deny the evidence before our eyes and, instead place our faith in them, despite the fact that they have repeatedly betrayed our hope and trust.

Just as it has for years, this Administration now seems determined to drown out substantive employee concerns by trying to razzle-dazzle us with selective, self-serving financial narratives. Often these are based on numbers and projections that neither we nor our external financial (or healthcare) analyst accept as accurate or plausible. (See below for a bit more detail.) In addition, of course, and as seems to have been the purpose of its Tuesday email, the Administration is eager to divide and pit employee groups against one another. “See how selfish and out of touch those professors are,” they suggest, as if the terms the WMU-AAUP negotiates only impact faculty. This is especially craven since the Administration knows full well that if the WMU-AAUP raises the compensation tide, then other employees’ boats are also more likely to rise. Not only that, in its negotiations with Western’s other unions, the Administration frequently points to WMU-AAUP compensation limits as a rationale for capping that of others. None of this is yet even to mention that the healthcare terms the WMU-AAUP negotiates impact nearly all WMU benefits-eligible employees.

What can you do?

• share this message widely, keeping in mind that the Administration’s Tuesday email message was sent campus-wide, but the WMU-AAUP does not have access to that email list, nor does any other employee group; all employees are at a great disadvantage in this respect
• reach out to the WMU-AAUP (staff@wmuaaaup.net) or to me directly to volunteer even 30 minutes of your time to distribute fliers or participate in other upcoming strategic actions (for example, one scheduled for late next week); stand ready for additional, spontaneous action calls
• as you are able, share your concerns with the Administration and with members of the Board of Trustees
• wear your WMU-AAUP t-shirt, display our fliers and posters, and show your support on social media

The WMU-AAUP stands in solidarity with all WMU employees and their families, and also in respectful service to our students—none of whom deserve to start their college experience at a campus in turmoil. With this in mind, I urge the WMU Administration to do better and to do it now. Our students and their families are counting on us.

Cathryn

Dr. Cathryn Bailey, President of the WMU-AAUP

A few notes:

• The Administration’s projections on cost are very high, for example, using a near 50% rate to calculate fringe. Not only do we not know the actual fringe costs because the Administration does not share them with us, only 19% of fringe is dependent on increased rates of inflation. Again, keep in mind that the Administration has long been forcing WMU employees to negotiate healthcare in the dark because they refuse to provide critical information, leaving us to assume that they may be raking in huge profits in this area.
• According to WMU’s own calculation, the WMU-AAUP compensation would cost the university only 3 weeks of reserves (i.e. its hoarded profits). According to our own calculation it is two weeks. And while, according to the Administration’s wildly conservative claims, nine months of reserves are needed, and our financial analyst cites three months as the responsible amount, and the Administration’s own professional organization cites only six, you’ll see that our proposal would barely impact even their most conservative number. To put this in perspective, in essence, the proposed WMU-AAUP compensation package would only come to about half of what athletics gets.
• We also note here that WMU employees have long been describing increasingly intolerable quality of life frictions to the Chapter. For instance: going into debt or dipping into critical savings to pay day-to-day bills; struggling to pay medical bills; dealing with rising daycare costs; grocery prices that strain budgets; interest rates and housing prices—that, in combination with falling wages—place home ownership far out of reach; leisure time and vacations that now seem impossible, even as burnout makes them more necessary; the looming threat of an expensive house or car repair creating chronic anxiety; retirement further out of reach. As the Administration hoards “rainy day money”—as it did even during the worst of the pandemic—it is raining hard for many in the Western family. After all, how many WMU employees are sitting on nine and half months of “reserves?”