Last month I wrote about the fiscal mess in Massachusetts and some of the underlying causes of that mess, including the state"s tax cuts in the 1990s and the fundamental deterioration of our national economy, which for two decades has not been a "rising tide that lifts all boats." Three fifths of families nationwide have benefited very little if at all from economic growth and have had their aspirations thwarted. At the same time, a college degree no longer guarantees a well-paying job. What are the consequences of these facts for the University, our region"s largest employer?
Press attention on the University often spotlights the people with the highest salaries. These salaries make great fodder for muckraking journalists, and, truth be told, many of us who work for the University gasp at some of them ourselves. But this emphasis skews the public perception of the University and undermines attempts to get adequate funding from the legislature. It wouldn"t surprise me if voters think most of us make $120,000 a year. Here"s one University employee"s attempt to set the record straight.
I collected some information from two of the unions for staff at UMass: Service Employees International Union, (SEIU/509), the union for "professional staff" (my union); and the University Staff Association (USA/MTA), one of the unions for "classified staff." In general, "professional" jobs require at least a Bachelor"s degree, whereas "classified" jobs don"t (but many of the incumbents have college degrees, some even advanced degrees). The data aren"t in exactly the same format. Like a lot of civil service jobs (including Town employees and teachers), classified jobs have "steps": the system assumes you get better at it a job with experience, and if you stay in a job, your pay increases each year for a certain number of years/steps (in this case, 11). That makes it difficult to calculate how many people in USA/MTA make any given salary per year. For SEIU/509 jobs, there are no steps, and the person keeping the Union"s records routinely creates a table of how salaries are distributed within the "levels" of professional jobs.
Enough explanations already! Here are some facts:
The lowest job grade in USA/MTA at UMass is Grade 6, with 24 people. Grade 6 Step 1 would pay $20,290 a year if it is a full- year job (many of these kinds of jobs are academic-year only jobs); the top step, 11, would pay $24,703. The Grade with the most jobs in it is Grade 11 with 407 people (almost 42% of the USA/MTA membership), Full-year salaries range from $23,790 to $30,370 per year. The next largest group, 190 people, is in Grade 13 where the scale goes from $26,243 to $33,576. Most of the people working in Grades 11 and 13 are "clerks" in offices, and probably most of the jobs are full-year jobs, but not necessarily all of them. In these jobs you only get paid for as many weeks as the job is scheduled for, so if you work for food services in the residence halls, for example, you better have something else to bring in income during the summer and January. According to a presentation given by Donna Johnson, President of USA/MTA, to the Ways and Means Committee, the average pay for people in her union is less than $29,000 a year.
There are two categories of SEIU/509 members, but I"ll stick with the larger one, "Unit A" (staff who just work, or who supervise other professional staff). Among Unit A members, the overall salary range goes from below $25,000 (39 people) to greater than $90,000 (2 people). 185 people (the largest group) make between $35,000 and $40,000 per year; 176 make between $40,000 and $45,000. 71% of SEIU/509 Unit members earn between $30,000 and $55,000 annually. The median salary is $45,540.
The SEIU/509 median is close to the center of the middle income group (that quintile ranged from $37,700 to $56,000); the USA/MTA average is smack dab in the second-lowest quintile ($21,600 to $37,700). Most UMass employees are in the same economic position as most of the taxpayers who pay our salaries.
In the fight to save the University from truly draconian cuts, we need to include an honest and courageous look at how others see us. The battle between the Governor and the Speaker over the President"s Office and Billy Bulger is many things, but one thing it is NOT is a reduction in the workload of a $30,000 a year clerk in the Comptroller"s Office. If a family with an income of, say, $56,000 (at the top of the median quintile) is paying both taxes and tuition at UMass, they probably feel quite pinched. They aren"t likely to be too sympathetic to being asked to pay for salaries twice theirs or more. We need to show the legislature, the governor, and the voters that UMass focuses on serving its customers, its students, efficiently and well.