Friday, February 17, 2006
What is Decompression?
Simply put, decompression is removing compression from the salary scale. Compression occurs when faculty with varying levels of experience are paid the same amount; a "new" faculty member making the same as someone who has been working for a number of years is an example of compression. A more extreme problem would be inversion where a person with less experience makes more than someone with more experience. Eliminating compression is one of the prime purposes of the salary step system.
(Just to be clear: there are some cases when a "new" person makes more than a person who has been here for a while, but it does not qualify as compression. For example, someone who has five years of experience at another institution arrives at Western, s/he would make more than someone who started straight out of graduate school the year before.)
In our current step scale, there is a glaring case of compression. Steps 1, 2, and 3 are all paid the same: $38,124. In other words, someone who started in Fall 2005 makes the same as someone who started back in Fall 2003. This is a result of the salary freeze that the union was forced to accept in the last biennium.
Our step system has 2% between each step, so step 2 should be 2% higher than step 1, and step 3 should be 2% higher than step 2. In the context of our negotiations, decompression refers to restoring the differences between these steps.
For someone at step 1, decompression does nothing for his salary. For someone at step 2, she would receive a 2% increase as a result of decompression. For anyone at step 3 or above, decompression would increase the salary by (just a bit over) 4%.
The fact that this increase applies to everyone at or above step 2 makes this a very expensive proposition for the administration. However, the compression and the need to remove it is a direct result of administrative actions in the past - i.e. the two-year salary freeze.
One important thing to note is that currently decompression is scheduled to happen in May 2006 in both the administration's and (reluctantly) the union's offers. This means that the administration is getting something akin to a 2.9 year salary freeze. In an ideal world, this decompression would take effect September 2005. This was a significant compromise by the union but one for which the administration did not have to make any compromises.
(Just to be clear: there are some cases when a "new" person makes more than a person who has been here for a while, but it does not qualify as compression. For example, someone who has five years of experience at another institution arrives at Western, s/he would make more than someone who started straight out of graduate school the year before.)
In our current step scale, there is a glaring case of compression. Steps 1, 2, and 3 are all paid the same: $38,124. In other words, someone who started in Fall 2005 makes the same as someone who started back in Fall 2003. This is a result of the salary freeze that the union was forced to accept in the last biennium.
Our step system has 2% between each step, so step 2 should be 2% higher than step 1, and step 3 should be 2% higher than step 2. In the context of our negotiations, decompression refers to restoring the differences between these steps.
For someone at step 1, decompression does nothing for his salary. For someone at step 2, she would receive a 2% increase as a result of decompression. For anyone at step 3 or above, decompression would increase the salary by (just a bit over) 4%.
The fact that this increase applies to everyone at or above step 2 makes this a very expensive proposition for the administration. However, the compression and the need to remove it is a direct result of administrative actions in the past - i.e. the two-year salary freeze.
One important thing to note is that currently decompression is scheduled to happen in May 2006 in both the administration's and (reluctantly) the union's offers. This means that the administration is getting something akin to a 2.9 year salary freeze. In an ideal world, this decompression would take effect September 2005. This was a significant compromise by the union but one for which the administration did not have to make any compromises.
# posted by Charles Anderson @ 1:52 PM 
