During a telecasted presentation from the UTK Hodges Library’s auditorium yesterday President John Petersen took the opportunity to discuss the issue of “merit-pay” during the question-and-answer section at the end. He went on record that the UT administration HAS been asking the Legislature to allow the administrator to give “merit-raises” to everyone, staff as well [...]

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UCW-CWA sent a letter to members of the UT administration last Monday, pointing out the inequity in that many faculty on this campus will be receiving far less than the minimum $600 that the staff will be receiving.

If no action is taken by the administration, worst case scenarios will show many UT lecturers receiving less than $300 (as many non tenure track faculty at UT earn less than $30,000.

The following letter was sent to address this concern.

Dear President Petersen, Chancellor Crabtree, Vice-President Sylvia Davis, and Provost Anne Mayhew,

As news of this year’s pay raises spreads I know that several employees, both faculty and staff, seem to be in utter shock. I am sure that no one in the UT administration is happy with the Tennessee legislature’s choice to provide funding for a 3 percent raise for some state agency employees, while only providing higher education with fund to cover a 2 percent raise. We all are aware that this state mandated raise falls far short of covering last year’s inflation costs (3.4 percent), and likewise we recognize that this raise will do little to help us address the persistence of poverty level wages and thirty years of decay in staff and faculty buying power.

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“The most important thing is protecting our quality faculty and doing the best we can for everybody else,” he said. “If I’m going to make decisions, I’m going to annoy some people. If I annoy the people who are adequate and don’t annoy the people who are excellent, I’m OK with that. They didn’t hire me not to make tough decisions.”

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