A modest proposal for employee raises at Western Michigan University

a message from WMU-AAUP President Cathryn Bailey and Vice President Christopher Nagle

As the WMU-AAUP’s “negotiations” with the WMU Administration drag on well past the Aug 30 deadline, it’s important to reiterate the context in which the WMU-AAUP initially proposed 11.25/11.25 (first and second years) across-the-board raises for faculty. In part, this was a reflection of wage value lost over the years to cost of living increases. As WMU-AAUP Chief Negotiator Andrew Hennlich has noted, even with such double-digit increases—a proposal the President’s negotiation team thought was a joke—the value of our salaries would only reach 2016 levels. But as the WMU-AAUP has also been insisting, there is a much larger story here, one that includes the Administration’s years-long disinvestment in its core academic mission, together with its increased eagerness to spend exorbitantly on all sorts of other things. Since these weird administrative spending priorities help explain why so many Western employees are now pushing back with such determination, we offer here a new negotiation proposal, one that we believe many in the Western community could support. In a nutshell, we are both willing to encourage our faculty colleagues to accept the President’s utterly unimpressive 3/3 compensation increase offer if the Administration agrees to radically alter its current spending priorities as described below. 

Specifically, we propose that the following areas be marked for meaningful and ongoing scrutiny and action by campus and community constituents, a process we are confident will lead to such expenses being eliminated or radically scaled down: anti-union private attorneys and corporate consultants, Division I sports, fancy new buildings, hoarded “reserve” money, and elite administrative salaries and “perks.” Although our proposal here is merely informal and tentative, we are happy to go ahead and suggest a few details: 

⁃the entire campus community would be consulted and heard before any additional commitments would be made to anti-union private attorneys or corporate consultants. As part of the process, the Administration would openly share all past expenses—rather than requiring us to FOIA them and then dragging its feet—and campus constituents, including faculty and developing student experts—would have a meaningful opportunity to weigh in on whether any additional such expenses were appropriate and ethical.

⁃an employee and student-driven body, including faculty financial experts—yes, we have those, President Montgomery!—to make a binding recommendation about Western’s current Division I football commitment. This body would review the financial viability and overall value of Western’s current athletic situation, including that the subsidies the university provides have been jawdropping and ever-growing (even by peer university standards). The student/employee body could also determine whether WMU as a whole might be better served by dropping down a division or some other scenario. In any case, Division I football would no longer be a sacred cow at WMU to which all other interests—including the university’s academic mission—would be expected to be happily subservient.

⁃the university would make no further commitment to construct new buildings unless and until Western’s key employee groups were meaningfully consulted. For example, the university could not build a new dining hall unless it first ensured that the frontline employee group tasked with running and maintaining the facility already had the baseline resources and working conditions these employees needed to thrive. The university could not commission any additional new residence halls or classroom buildings without first getting assurance from relevant employees that they too were properly resourced and prepared to serve the students these buildings are meant to attract and retain. This would include, for example, advisors, instructors, professors, teaching assistants, administrative assistants and more. The general principle here: a university is not primarily its buildings but its people, and it is foolish to invest in the former while alienating, disrespecting and starving the latter.

⁃the university would bring its addiction to hoarding profits under control, what it misleadingly refers to as “reserves.” According to the Administration’s wildly conservative claims, it needs nine months of reserves to be financially responsible. However, our independent financial analyst cites three months as the responsible amount, and the Administration’s own professional organization cites only six. In any case, our initial compensation 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 as a matter of course. In short, the Administration must agree to begin investing irresponsibly hoarded reserves back into its core mission, i.e., its students and frontline employees. 

⁃the president, provost, and handful of other elite WMU administrators would immediately agree to slash their shockingly high salaries. For example, the president’s $600,000+ compensation package could be modestly reduced by 1/3 and he could volunteer to start paying for his own housing, phone, and country club membership. He would also agree to donate all of his past WMU bonuses—including the one he was awarded the day before the faculty voted No Confidence in him (!)—to pay for free student parking. While we’re at it, the provost, too, could take a salary cut of 1/3–still putting him at the top end of WMU employee salaries—and  receive travel funds equal to what WMU is agreeing it is obligated to provide to professors through its Faculty Research Travel Fund: no more than one trip of $700 per year. In addition, in honor of the Administration’s increasing shifting of expenses onto employees and students, if any of these elite administrators needs a new laptop, travel to other WMU-campuses, or other work tools, they will pay for this out of pocket and also be subjected to lectures about how greedy they are and how poor the university is. 

In addition to the financial elements of our proposal, there is one other point on which we would insist: that the Administration agree to kill and bury its constant rationalization that it should gauge its spending priorities based on what “everyone else is doing.” How often do we all hear the same explanation from Western Michigan University leaders that, for example, we need a millionaire president because “other schools are doing it” or that WMU doesn’t have to pay its employees better because “there are other universities with salaries that are even lower.” Not only are such Administrative claims of “normalcy” frequently false or misleading—Western actually is falling short in a number of respects—it’s also just embarrassing to hear our own leaders boast about how our once-great university’s goal is to be mediocre.