Open Thread
Sep 18th, 2006 by UCW-CWA
Please share general thoughts and comments about merit pay at UT, the pros and cons of ways it has been done in the past, general feelings about wages and compensation, etc.
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UT employees should receive a yearly increase of 3% - This is simply to stay abreast of the 3% (average) standard of living increase.
I agree with the cost of living raise, but I don’t think it should stop there. A person should be compensated fairly for the quality of the work they do. An across the board raise isn’t fair because it doesn’t separate those who work hard from those who don’t. It needs to be about incentive.
I do belive in annual (cost of living) and logevity raises, however merit raises based on positive job performance evaluations are more of an incentive to be more productive. Employers should definitely try to keep good emplyees, instead of loosing them to higher paying firms. However, in the past I have witnessed merit raises only being given to income producing personel, instead of hard working employees that deserve it.
I have no problem with merit raises. I would see it as an incentive to do the very best that I could do. When you see someone that spends most of the time trying to get out of their work get the same across the board raise as you, it kinda has an affect on your attitude.
I think that theoretically merit raises are good idea, but when I’ve read online about the way they end up working, it makes me really skeptical. First of all, there’s really no system that can fairly decide who’s doing really good work, and who’s doing just okay work. It’s all up to the boss. Merit raises at other places just turn into popularity contests with the boss.
Another thing is that merit raises are given to people based on how hard they’re working, which assumes that everyone has the same energy to work in the first place. I know people at UT who have two jobs already because the university doesn’t pay them enough. How are they supposed to work as hard as people with one job when they’ve been really trying at other places just trying to get by?
In a perfect world merit raises would be okay, but right now we need to focus on the fact that a quarter of UT workers who are on full time are making almost nothing–so little that they can get welfare with a full time job!
Merit raises are the BEST way to keep the BEST staff motivated to do even BETTER. Those that fail to perform should not be rewarded the same as our top performers and that is just as true for a person picking up trash as it is for a top technical or administrtive worker. The trouble is you need a realistic and fair way to assess performance and we do not have that (not yet). The evaluation process will never be perfect, some good ole boy effects will always be felt but there are firms and institutions our size that do a good job of this and it isn’t rocket science! Rather than have our senior administration dream up something that they like (or pay a consulting company a mil for their “ideas”), we should implement a performance evaluation system that has worked well elsewhere. One concept that works well elsewhere is this: your immediate supervisor only evaluates your effectiveness while that person’s supervisor evaluates your potential and can raise or lower the evaluation from your immediate supervisor. This keeps the worker at least slightly insulated from being on their bosses’ *&#$ list…it takes two people to have a negative effect on a worker. It isn’t perfect but it works elsewhere and it really protects both the worker from a boss that has it in for the worker and it protects the institution from a boss that just gives every employee top marks just to be nice.
UT also needs to do an honest job at bringing our lowest paid workers up to a decent standard of living. I don’t mean we should pay wages twice the going area wage…we just don’t need skilled laborers barely making ends meet. Many of our skilled trade positions pay nowhere near the industry average (mechanics, carpenters, etc.). Also, we shouldn’t wait for the government to get around to increasing the minimum wage - our state should have a minimum wage increase. I don’t think it is realistic to think that UT would implement it’s own minimum wage (living wage?) but maybe that would do it…don’t know. I’m no union supporter but that doesn’t mean I’m not supportive of our lower paid staff either.
If we were getting fair pay for the work we do to begin with, I would have no problem with merit raises. We need to address the issue of people being ‘punished’ for staying in the same position for many years. Case in point: I’ve changed jobs at UT and been able to get more money each time I’ve moved. However, a friend of mine who has been here for 25 years and does a great job still makes less than I do because she started at a low salary, in a unit with traditonally low salaries compared to other units, and the percentage raises meant she actually fell further and further behind other employees, all because she stayed in the same job. Merit raises should only come AFTER all these issues of fairness and poverty wages are addressed, not before.
I’m also worried that merit pay won’t be applied fairly. If the person who spends their time trying to get out of their work is a buddy of the boss, they might get a merit raise and the hard worker might not. If you are a person who stands up for yourself and doesn’t do what’s ‘politically’ good for you, you could get punished by not getting a raise.
You could also have a unit where everyone performs well, but UT HR has said that they will ‘look into’ any unit that has too many people with top ratings.
Yes, across the board raises do ‘reward’ some people who don’t do much, but they are fairer and better for morale, IMO, than a system that puts one employee against another trying to curry favor with the boss. Ask anyone who works in private industry whether the really hard workers get raises, or just those who manage to make themselves look good.
Merit raises should by all means take into account those who are working the hardest, and in the case of faculty merit raies, those who are publishing books and peer-reviewed articles, soliciting and securing grants, and bringing public attention through outreach to UT, should indeed be rewarded. But I would like to bring President Petersen’s attention to the recent report by the National Academy of Sciences that noted that without flexibility in tenure, promotion, and raises, mothers, and all those who do not have wives taking care of their homes and supporting their professional careers, will never be able to compete with those who are niether parents of minor children, or do have wives taking care of the domestic front. In effect, Petersen’t proposal may be well meaning, but the impact on mothers will profoundlly intensify inequality — particularly in the sciences — and demoralize faculty and staff to such an extent that many excellent and hard-working women will leave. The “producing” “stars” he envisions shining will make any commitment the university may have to diversity and gender equity a pathetic farce. He ought to be reminded that the new rising stars he’s planning to hire are mostly of reproductive age — should any of them have children, will it be the mother or the father who will be staying in the office through dinner and up writing till midnight? And for those who do not leave, what incentive will there be to produce anything at all if all it takes is two or three workaholic colleagues with little or no family committments to ensure that the mother who works aorund the clock and still “produces” can never expect to advance at UT?
hmmm…. some interesting points have been raised. what i would like to know is, where is my incentive to work really hard in the first place? i get charged to park nowhere near where i work, the student body is growing (increasing my workload), there are people in administration making 6 figure incomes (seven figures in sports) who don’t work nearly as hard as me (time management, skills, education, getting along with a variety of people, patience, etc.), there’s not enough time off with pay, and the current adminstration is going to increase how much i have to pay for things like parking/dental/health insurance (all the while feeding me hotdogs at ‘branding ceremonies’). it’s depressing bs no matter how one looks at it. i’m taking my talent and going elsewhere as soon as i can.
Petersen is totally misguided on at least two issues. First, speaking for faculty, there is wide variation in workload, so when every faculty is judged by publications (largely), time available for research & writing become significantly different. If one works in a department where there are large class assignments and no graduate assistants, clerical help or grading assistance, the workload for those professors take an inordinate amount of time.
Peterson’s second faulty resoning is that merit is real when enployees have not had pay increases equivalent to the cost of living for over 10 years. This means that if a person made $50,000. five years ago, to stay even they need to be earning about $59,000. now. If your pay has actually been DECREASING for the last decade and then someone gives you a BIG 3% RAISE & calls it merit, THAT IS NO INCENTIVE TO “WORK HARDER”!! Perhaps the scariest part of all of this is Peterson’s lack of logic.