AAUP Bucknell’s Worksharing and Pay Transparency Subcommittee reported back to the chapter a busy and exciting semester. The subcommittee is continuing efforts from previous years that made strides in pay transparency and generally increasing the knowledge on campus of what salaries look like for faculty and staff across campus by Dr. Clare Sammells’ opt-in salary sharing survey. The subcommittee is expanding to ensure that AAUP and others have access to information about pay bands across all university employees. Maintenance of that database, particularly as compensation and job descriptions change, is critical for employees at Bucknell in a range of roles. The subcommittee has progressed on other specific goals of mapping contracts and increasing contract transparency so that consultant and subcontracted workers so that no worker at Bucknell is left behind.
Through meetings with HR (now the Office of Talent, Culture, and Human Resources (yikes!)) and attendance at one of their Pay Transparency Workshops, subcommittee members have learned that administration is hoping to become “a market leader in compensation” rather than being lagging behind averages for compensation. To this end, the subcommittee has offered their own compensation philosophy:
We believe that one’s compensation at Bucknell should derive from one’s job responsibilities (as reflected in annually updated job descriptions), in combination with qualifications related to one’s years of experience fulfilling these job responsibilities. We encourage standardization of job titles and compensation across the University. We believe that compensation should be irrespective of divisional placement within the university. We believe that Bucknell should move towards becoming a market leader in compensation for all positions, prioritizing the compensation packages of the lowest paid staff members.
This compensation philosophy then prompts their goals for the spring 2024 semester. A potential overarching campaign, the subcommittee has begun developing “CPI + 2% for back pay” as an overarching goal. Rather than relying on piecemeal raises, the subcommittee is proposing that pay be tied to the Consumer Price Index, as it has been in the past. This allows for baked-in increases in compensation so that inflation does not cause what amounts to cuts in pay as cost of living increases. To account for the way that we have been left behind in pay, the subcommittee is also proposing a 2% additional increase as back pay.
To ensure that all workers at Bucknell are paid a living wage, more progressive models are being explored. Continuing opt-in survey pushes are a critical path to achieving equity for the lowest compensated workers and pushing Bucknell’s HR to make compensation strategies public. To get involved with these and other efforts, please contact Jim Pearson in Biology (jtp012@bucknell.edu) and Jennifer Thomson in History (jct021@bucknell.edu).