Last Friday, we got into some in-depth discussions about how to fix academic professional (AP) pay structures. Currently, academic professionals have little opportunity for advancement in pay or position, so as a group, they face serious salary compression and inversion. For example, on average, Advisor/Counselor I’s with 4-7 years of experience earn less money than those who have been here less than one year.
In our last session, we presented a step-system model where academic professionals would receive a bump in pay for each year of work experience and receive pay differentials for job-related expertise, such as bilingual skills or having certifications or advanced degrees. Administration wanted to explore other solutions, and today, they proposed an Academic Professional reclassification study. This option would bring in a consultant to analyze our current job family structures and come-up with a system that would regroup APs according to their job-specific duties. This system could provide opportunities for advancement (for example, there could be a Financial Aid Counselor I, II and III position created), and restructure salaries. It would also help clarify AP duties in preparation for the new Department of Labor standards regarding overtime pay that will go into effect next year. The scope of the consultant’s work would be determined jointly by administration and AAUP. While this option may provide advancement opportunities for our academic professionals over the long-term, we need to do something more immediate to fix the pressing problems of salary inversion and compression and inversion.
We would be open to a reclassification study, but our APs need to have an immediate recalibration of their salary structure in order to more accurately recognize the contributions they’ve made to Portland State. In our last round of negotiations, our APs received a one-time, salary compression adjustment. While this percentage increase was appreciated, it wasn’t significant or enduring enough to correct the long-standing salary compression/inversion issues. Because the minimum salaries for APs and NTTF were raised to $40,000, many experienced APs, even with the compression adjustment, still ended up making less than their newly hired counterparts. We suggested that a step system could be immediately enacted, and then readjusted once the reclassification study was completed.
We began weighing the two options on the table (step system and reclassification study) against our interests, which is the fifth step in the IBB process. The first interest was ending AP salary compression and inversion. Most of us agreed that the step system address this problem, however, a few members of the administrative team were “uncertain” and said this process felt too positional. So we switched to a brainstorming session, where a number of options were quickly generated by both teams. In addition to a step system, merit pay and funding the salary advancement pool (this is a set pool of money that APs can apply for to recalibrate their salaries) were suggested. Both sides agreed to bring a revised options based upon our brainstorm to the table for our next bargaining session. We meet again next Friday, December 11th from 10:30-4:00 in ASRC 660.