University of Toledo faculty union questions administrative bonuses is putting it mildly…
I recommend first reading the Blade article, University of Toledo faculty union questions administrative bonuses:
The University of Toledo is buzzing about administrative bonuses.
The faculty union has compiled a list of 14 top officials who it says collectively received bonuses of more than $580,000 in 2009.
That list, which is part of a UT American Association of University Professors newsletter, has been widely circulated across campus.
It’s not just being circulated on campus – it’s online with the article titled, Pigs at the Public Trough, part of which states:
Many of these bonuses and extra compensation exceed the total annual salaries of individual employees being furloughed or terminated. There has been no indication that the Administration is asking for give-backs from themselves or is renegotiating future bonuses or extra compensation for themselves.
There is a serious ethical question, if not a legal one, as to whether or not a public institution supported by Ohio taxpayers should be distributing large bonuses and extra compensation to Administrators, especially while other employees are being furloughed or terminated.
These Administrators are feeding non-stop at the public trough while Ohio citizens and taxpayers struggle to pay their bills, keep their homes, and feed their families. UT employees are regularly asked to “do more with less.” However, greedy UT Administrators do less with more. The UT Administration is behaving like “Pigs at the Public Trough”.
Hi Lisa,
I wanted to offer a few thoughts early on as I imagine the consensus won’t be favorable toward the University (and it’s always more fun to have a real person to aim slings and arrows at rather than just a list of names most won’t recognize – remember Strunk rhymes with lots of fun stuff.)
I don’t have much faith in the numbers presented here – I know for a fact at least some of the figures quoted on the list have been awarded to leaders doing extra work or appointed on a temporary basis to more than one position. If you’re getting paid more to do more work, that hardly meets my definition of a bonus. By that definition overtime would be a bonus.
Others on the list have incentives written into their contracts: achieve X and you’ll receive Y. If my taxpayer dollars are paying a high-level administrator’s salary, I’d rather see their compensation tied to the results they achieve rather than simply giving them a lump sum of money to occupy the position.
But I also understand this is as much an objection to the philosophy of bonuses as it is to any specific dollar figure. To some, perhaps to many, there is no one who deserves to make several hundred thousand dollars a year, regardless of their job or their function. I respect that position, though I do disagree with it.
But there is a serious (though, I will grant, a much less emotionally satisfying) argument to be made that compensation must be based on market value – for professors, for nurses, for presidents and for all others at UT. UT looks at what peer institutions pay their employees and tries to pay competitive salaries. If UT pays less, it will constantly be refilling positions as employees leave for better opportunities.
There is value in keeping top administrators at UT and maintaining a strategic vision over time. For those who doubt that, simply look at UT in the late 1990s and early 2000s. UT went through four presidents in less than 5 years and the impact was devastating to UT and (I would argue) to the community. Toledo is a stronger community when UT is strong and the current team of senior leaders has UT as strong an institution as it has been in decades.
I respect less those few faculty members who refer to senior administrators as “pigs” (surely we can at least now put to rest the fiction that Dr. Jacobs doesn’t tolerate free speech). Surely these few faculty – like all faculty and staff – would demand that they also be paid market rates for their positions. And if they were not, surely they would consider jobs at other institutions that did pay market rates.
At a board of trustees meeting just this Monday, the President recommended eliminating several hundred thousand dollars for bonuses to balance the UT budget following a reduction in state subsidy. No, you should not feel sorry for those going bonusless, but it is a fact that directly contradicts the first paragraph of the section Lisa quoted. Might there be any other facts left out because they were inconvenient?
I’ve tried to offer an argument of logic to an issue that is inherently emotional and I do understand how hollow this will sound to many. But if in every tough budget time, UT were to reduce pay to avoid layoffs, we would continually lose our best people and a weak University also serves taxpayers – and students – poorly.
Full disclosure: I work in UT’s Communications Office.
August 28th, 2009 at 10:29 pmJon, I appreciate not only your full disclosure but your thoughts on this. That is the advantage of blogging, there are many times through the course of discussion it’s possible for readers to learn more than what is posted as a starting point.
I don’t disagree the description of pigs is a strong term, which is why I felt it was important to share what was being presented.
August 28th, 2009 at 10:37 pmJon Strunk wrote:
It is this type of attitude that is so detrimental to this area. We need to face the reality that some people and positions, by virtue of their training and experience, are worth more than others.
August 29th, 2009 at 4:13 pmThat is exactly how and why our economy
and business climate and atmosophere
got to be the way it is now. FALLING
APART!
NO INDIVIDUAL PERSON (NO MATTER WHO OR
August 29th, 2009 at 5:54 pmWHAT THEY OR ANYONE ELSE BELIEVES THEY
HAPPEN TO BE) IS WORTH HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS
OF DOLLARS IN A BONUS OR WHATEVER YOU
WANT TO CALL IT!!
By the way, what are they to do for the
August 29th, 2009 at 7:08 pmfirst hundreds of thousands of dollars
base rate they receive??
They don’t need to do or accomplish
anything to get it except to show up??
Sue wrote:
What college did you graduate from and what union are you affiliated with?
August 30th, 2009 at 1:27 pmJon Strunk wrote:
Strunk — point exceptionally well made. As a recent UT graduate, I agree with your analysis. Class warfare will always be fashionable for some, and I wish your leadership team luck and continued success in moving the university and community forward.
August 30th, 2009 at 1:32 pmI have NEVER been a member of any
August 30th, 2009 at 3:18 pmunion whatsover in the 60 plus years
of my life and YES I am a college
graduate with a degree in BUSINSS
ADMINISTRATION!
IMHO the real issue is that these institutions of higher learning all use the same argument: “If we don’t pay competitive salaries, we won’t get the best people to run our college/university.” This argument is a self-fulfilling one. I know that they have professional organizations to which they belong and with which they have regular meetings. Why not agree to hold down ALL administrative salaries nationwide during this Depression economy, if only to appease us common folk?!
First of all, they assume that their people are doing a good job. How are they evaluated? Are they busy using valuable time [highly] evaluating each other? When was the last time the University of Toledo did a thorough review of line and staff relationships to see if they could restructure, eliminate duplicative services, and downsize the administration, as they have downsized those who deliver the services directly to the student/clients — the faculty?
These colleges/universities’ administrators seem to believe that they are above all economic realities. No matter how much the communities they serve are suffering, no matter how much they “must” raise tuition to their student/ clients, heaven forbid that any of the administrators, who earn more than anyone else on campus, and more than most people in the communities they serve, should have to sacrifice at all!!
Mr. Strunk, I give you credit for using your own name on a public forum. But, you really don’t resonate with us common folk. Reading what you wrote, to me, you come across as paternalistic, and as one who lacks empathy for the average Toledoan, the average UT faculty member, and the average student/client of UT.
August 30th, 2009 at 4:30 pmSue wrote:
So hypothetically speaking lets say I am the best widget consultant in the world. I am very good at my job and I have been working in the field for 20+years. The companies I work for save millions of dollars a year because of the expertise I give them. And, I make over 200 thousand a year. (some of the tech consultants I know are in that range, and I’m sure that’s not unusual.)
Now on one hand I understand from a an equality standpoint why that seems wrong that I should make so much more money than other people who work just as hard in a week as I do. But, the fact remains that my expertise demands a premium because of the scarcity of the goods. Some of the motivation I have to become said expert is rooted in my desire to make more money. Without the ability to make more money I loose some of that motivation.
There are millions of people on this planet that can do lots of average things, but how many can shoot a ball like Michael Jordan? Not many(Maybe 2 or 3 right now, and that’s debatable). And, he deserves to make money that reflects his 1 in a billion skill set. If Michael Jordan had known all along he would have never made any more money that an average salary all his life, would he have ever risked so much time and effort to become such a basketball player? who knows, my guess is no, you can that sick and wrong, but that is capitalism.
August 30th, 2009 at 5:06 pmAs much has been in the news this year regardinding Executives salaries, bonus, etc. I would say what it really is, but I
August 30th, 2009 at 8:51 pmI had better not at this point!
Your so called “average things” built
August 30th, 2009 at 9:49 pmby hard working people that started
and helped build this country will
now evidently be destroyed by your
so called “experts” whose motivation
is money.
Would the professors and unions be in favor of giving the adminstrators and staff tenure positions so they could have a job for life too regarless of how incompenant they were after they got tenured?
August 31st, 2009 at 10:21 amI cannot speak for the UT faculty nor for their union. I do take exception with your statement, which I find to be a common misconception, that tenure means, “…a job for life no matter how incompetent they were after they got tenured”.
Tenure is different in each state. In the State of Ohio tenure ensures due process rights only. It protects instructors from arbitrary and/or predatory firings.
The problem in education in general, and not having been part of UT except as a student I wouldn’t really know the specifics there, most school administrators at all levels do not follow through properly on the steps needed to remove someone from a tenured position who deserves to be fired. This is often because the administrators are incompetent, (which calls into question even more their “bonuses” based upon evauations that they do for each other), or the administrators simply have neither the time nor the background to properly supervise university professors in so many wide-ranging fields of instruction.
Tenure should never be a guaranteed job for life no matter what. In Ohio, when there is competent supervision, it isn’t!
August 31st, 2009 at 11:31 amMost administrators are hired at the tenured professor level faculty appointment and, if they quit or are released from their administrative positions, they automatically take a position in the academic department of their expertise. They usually continue to recieve their administrative salary. I doubt if bonuses go along for the ride.
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:28 pm<>
Were the 4 presidents underpaid? I doubt it.
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:44 pmWhy did Dan Johnson abandon the store to the hospital?
Why did the Board of Trustees avoid the customary search procedure and its consensus-building goodwill and appoint a president?
Why were there no questions about the hundreds of thousands of dollars –of taxpayer money– that Jacobs et al. spent while stalling the interminable faculty contract negotiations, using the smokescreen of Interest-based bargaining, but not obeying the rules?
Why did the administration hire an expensive union-buster lawyer for the negotiations?
Did the administration really need to pay around $70k of taxpayer dollars in an effort to take vengeance on the College of Arts and Sciences for voting “no confidence” in former dean Y. T. Lee?
Does anyone know how University Executives of non state funded Universities are compensated in comparison to those at UT?
This is an honest question, not an attempt to make a point.
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:36 pmI am very disappointed at these bonuses. Even if some of these were part of contracts, they are in very bad taste. And the performance bonuses? Even worst taste. To think that these were performances bonuses paid for great work when the University had to eliminate hundreds of positions is ridiculous. In theory, what is the difference between these bonuses and bonuses paid to insurance and bank execs? Why would these execs at UT accept these at this difficult time? It just shows they are putting themselves above the rest of the university.
At other universities, presidents and execs have given back their bonuses, or applied them towards scholarships. Now that would have been class.
And do you really think President Jacobs would have eliminated the bonuses from the budget this year if there wasn’t such a public outcry? If this wasn’t public information, I’m sure he would have kept them in the budget
September 5th, 2009 at 8:41 pm