Editor,
Please, President David Schmidly, no more Web conferences and weekly e-mails. They are nice and all, but they don't help me pay the bills. Instead, talk to your good friend, the market, on behalf of the University's staff, and ask him to give us more than a 2 percent raise.
Recently, as part of the U.S.-UNM contract negotiations, we the staff of UNM were told by human resources those of us earning less than $30,000 would receive a 5 percent raise, while everyone earning $30,000 or more would receive only a 2 percent raise. This applies to all UNM employees regardless of union affiliation. The same 2 percent increase applies to someone making $30,000 and someone earning $300,000. But the impact of the raise is felt differently for the vast majority of us compared to the UNM upper class.
The staff member making $30,000 will get a raise of $600 this year. This amounts to about $23 per paycheck before taxes. The person making $300,000 will earn $6,000 more this year, or approximately $230 more per paycheck. The person earning $30,000 will be able to buy an extra tank of gas each month, while the person earning $300,000 can use his or her annual raise to put a hefty down payment on a nice new car.
When Schmidly was first hired, his annual salary was reported at $600,000 a year in addition to a $40,000 living expense and $40,000 car expense. This year, Schmidly will receive a raise of at least $13,600. Without Schmidly's 2 percent raise, he still earned about $26,000 per paycheck. Last year, I earned $27,000 for the entire year. Schmidly nearly earned my entire annual salary in one paycheck.
During the contract negotiations, some of us suggested that the highly paid employees at UNM sacrifice some of their raise to make sure that people earning $35,000 or below receive at least a 5 percent raise. The human resources representatives shook their heads and informed us we needed to understand the market. Human resources said the market demands that if you want to keep good people in high places, then you have to pay them a lot of money and then continue to increase their pay indefinitely.
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Who is this market? I'd sure like to get a chance to speak to it. Human resources clearly knows it well, and my guess is that Schmidly is also a close associate. Human resources is making little effort to talk to the market on behalf of the majority of us who are not getting rich off of our UNM salaries. But maybe Schmidly will.
Please, Schmidly, ask the market, "Why do you give a lot of money to people in high places in order to keep them around but don't apply that same philosophy to the rest of us?" And, Schmidly, if the market just shrugs its shoulders and says, "Well, that's just the way it is," then humbly request those earning $100,000 or more to forgo their 2 percent raise so the rest of us can meet our monthly mortgage and medical bills.
Until you have this conversation with your friend the market, please no more Web conferences and weekly e-mails. I just don't have time for them while I'm trying to make ends meet.
Sam Roth
UNM staff
