New West Network

Faculty Union Responds to Idaho’s Financial Crisis

By Nick Gier, New West Unfiltered 4-22-09

STATE FACULTY UNION RESPONDS TO FINANCIAL CRISIS

By Nick Gier, President, Idaho Federation of Teachers

On April 15 representatives from five of Idaho's six campuses met in a phone conference to discuss the financial crisis. They were delegates to the Higher Education Council of the Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFT/AFL-CIO.

The first item of business was the proposed salary reductions. Early in the legislative session the attorney general's office announced it would research the relationship between academic tenure and salary.

Tenure can be removed only in cases of professional incompetence, a felony conviction, or moral turpitude. Revoking tenure for these reasons requires full due process of law. Professors can also lose their tenure in cases of bona fide financial exigency and necessary program reduction.

The faculty union won a $1 million dollar settlement for eight tenured faculty during the 1981-82 recession when a judged ruled that the UI failed to prove a financial emergency. Since that time no tenured Idaho professor has been fired for this reason, and this year no Idaho campus administrator has declared financial exigency, although one could argue that conditions do indeed exist to justify one.

Our national office supplied us with two legal precedents in which judges ruled that academic tenure protects base salary. Tenure is a property right and a tenured professor's salary is part of that property.

The IFT Higher Education Council voted to oppose any salary reductions for tenured faculty. We join the BSU Faculty Senate President in vowing to file a class action suit if tenured faculty are forced to take a pay cut.

In a second motion it was decided that staff, lecturers, and non-tenured faculty should be exempt from salary reductions, and that salary savings should be taken from those earning more than $100,000.

Across the nation administrative positions have grown at a greater rate than teaching positions. The situation at BSU is particularly egregious. From 2005-2007 BSU had an average of 101 more administrators than its peer institutions, but BSU had an average of 191 fewer faculty.

Administrative salaries have also outpaced faculty pay. For example, since 1982 the salaries of 11 top UI administrative positions have increased 260 percent while full professor salaries increased 198 percent. (The CPI was 215.) The faculty union voted to recommend that administrative positions be cut before teaching positions.

Since 1987 state subsidies for athletics at the UI have grown 338 percent while appropriations for Idaho higher education have grown 159 percent. Currently the state monies for UI and ISU athletics exceed $3 million on each campus. On the principle that appropriated funds are for academics only, faculty union representatives moved that all subsidies for Idaho athletics be phased out over 4-6 years.

In October 2002, the State Board of Education hastily wrote program reduction procedures, which the union found unsatisfactory. For six years our requests for revision were ignored.

In December 2008 the IFT obtained a legal opinion about the program reduction policy. It was found to be “severely deficient in terms of procedural due process safeguards.” Furthermore, the procedures “do not comport with Idaho law” and the termination of any tenured faculty member could be challenged in court.

At its April 15 meeting the IFT Higher Education Council voted that the SBOE revise these procedures in order to avoid expensive legal procedures.

We did not get a chance to talk about furloughs, which might be the best solution. First, furloughs would not erode base pay; second, lost pay could be made up at a later date or at retirement; third, if the money is recouped, then a lawsuit for tenured faculty salary may become a moot point.

We urge the Idaho Legislature to decide on a 3 percent salary reduction. The funds are there to support this lower level of cuts. We also propose that unit administrators be given discretion to use furloughs or exempt those at bottom of the pay scale from any salary cuts.

Nick Gier is President of the IFT Higher Education Council. He taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. Read or listen to all of his columns at www.NickGier.com