Raises for staff, faculty leave many below inflation

Editor,

The article in last week's Daily Lobo on salary increases highlights the difficult and precarious position the University is in. Inflationary pressures and the rising cost of food and energy are hitting all staff, faculty and students hard.

At the budget hearing in March, Staff Council, in conjunction with the Deans' Council, Faculty Senate, ASUNM and GPSA, recommended a minimum 4 percent increase for faculty and staff and an additional 1 percent parity increase for faculty who are currently making at least 12 percent less than their peers. I suspect staff face a similar discrepancy, but the comparison data on staff positions are harder to obtain. And while Staff Council is working on it, we currently have no good salary survey on which to base comparisons and recommendations.

The actual allocation was a 3 percent increase for faculty, 5 percent for staff making less than $30,000 a year, and 2 percent for other staff. I believe the 1 percent parity increase for faculty was the right thing to do, as was the 5 percent increase for staff at the lowest pay grades. Nevertheless, these increases still leave many below inflationary pressures and their peers. Just yesterday, one of my staff members resigned, citing financial reasons.

I have no doubt other faculty and staff members are looking at the same decision. We have a rough road ahead of us as UNM employees leave for greener pastures. The situation is dire, tensions are high and solutions are scarce. In hard times, it's easy to retreat to protecting our own self-interests and pointing fingers, but the one thing that will get us out of this mess is coming together to support each other. Staff, faculty and students form an interdependent system on campus, and a thriving university requires support structures that will allow each constituency to perform the vital role that it does.

Elisha Allen

Staff Council