Discouraged by stalled contract negotiations and their employer’s decision last month to cut their pay, faculty members at the University of Hawaii made their way back to class this week. Although talks are slated to resume, their future is hazy. A few professors—set on leaving the system and its troubles behind—are poised to look for work elsewhere in a job market that is grim for most.
“You’re dealing with a situation where you feel under threat constantly,” says Nandita Sharma, an associate professor of ethnic studies and sociology at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. “Basically, a lot of people feel stressed about what’s going to happen next.”
In late December, after 15 months of negotiations with the faculty union over a new contract, administrators at the University of Hawaii system decided enough was enough. Talks were stuck over the university’s desire to cut faculty pay—and possibly faculty members’ jobs.
So in an e-mail message to faculty members dated three days after Christmas, M.R.C. Greenwood, the system’s president, informed them pay would be cut by 6.7 percent beginning this month because of a budget deficit. Ms. Greenwood says the cut is temporary, and salaries are slated to bounce back in June 2011.
But the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, which represents the 3,700 or so faculty members who work at the system’s 10 campuses, isn’t buying that. The union says the current contract calls for the terms to stand until a new one is approved. So the union hand-delivered a grievance last week to Ms. Greenwood. J.N. Musto, the union’s executive director and chief negotiator, said in a written statement that he hoped the move would prompt bargaining “in good faith.”
Administrators refused to retract the pay cut but offered to meet with union negotiators again to discuss a settlement. The union has agreed to return to the bargaining table and has asked that a federal mediator monitor the negotiations. A date for the meeting, which Ms. Greenwood will attend at the union’s request, has not been set.
In the interim, though, the union has gone to court to block the pay cut. What will happen next isn’t certain. A judge could rule in the union’s favor and prevent the pay cut. Or, if the judge sides with the university, that essentially would confirm the absence of a contract and would clear the way for professors to strike. The old agreement prohibited faculty members from walking out.
Morale Problems
Because of state budget cuts, the Hawaii system, which also includes seven community colleges, faces a $154-million shortfall over two years. The University of Hawaii-Manoa, the system’s flagship, will likely bear the brunt of the austerity measures planned for the system. But just what—and who—will be sacrificed is unclear, faculty members at Manoa say.
“You’re thinking, Is this job going to be here a year from now?” Ms. Sharma says. “Am I going to have to get involved in a legal battle to keep my job?”
Meda Chesney-Lind, a professor of women’s studies at Manoa, says the fall semester was marked by bulging classrooms and talk of shuttering programs, merging majors, and possibly laying off tenured and tenure-track professors. With the state’s budget crisis looming, contract negotiations grew more contentious and administrators said that the pay cuts were a possibility if agreement couldn’t be reached. Ms. Chesney-Lind says she began to worry about what junior faculty members would think of their new workplace.
“I’m thinking of our junior faculty all the time because it’s not easy to recruit people to the University of Hawaii,” says Ms. Chesney-Lind, a criminologist. “The tiniest condo here costs a fortune compared to what professors make. You’re just trying to check in with them and reassure them to the degree that you can.”
Ms. Greenwood, a onetime faculty member herself, acknowledges that “there are bound to be morale problems” at public institutions facing deep budget cuts as employees of all stripes are “worried about paying their bills or whether they can afford the things they expected to be able to.” One solution, she says, is to “try to do what we can together to get through this.”
But a rampant rumor mill can make doing that—and assuaging fears—a tough job.
“You hear one thing after another, and there’s very little clarification from the administration,” says Ms. Sharma, a member of the union’s board of directors.
She counts herself lucky. Her position gives her access to the union’s lawyer, whom she can tap for information. “I try to pass along what I hear,” she says. “You end up spending time away from your research, teaching, and all of your administrative responsibilities just to deal with this stuff.”
‘Pervasive Disrespect’
According to the university, Hawaii professors make an average of $84,000 a year. The salary cut amounts to about $5,600 annually on average. However, the union says the true loss is at least double that when a reduction in health-care contributions and a payroll lag are factored in (the system has proposed pushing one paycheck into the next fiscal year).
Ms. Chesney-Lind says faculty members had already “mentally budgeted” for a salary hit because they had seen other state workers take pay cuts.
But some feel the path Ms. Greenwood, who has led the system only since last August, took to get to that cut reeks of disregard for the role the faculty plays in the university’s success
“The top administrators have demonstrated a pervasive and longstanding disrespect for faculty,” says Cynthia Franklin, an associate professor of English. “And in addition to these unilaterally imposed pay cuts, our workload is rising exponentially.”
The pending pay cut, which would save the system about $24-million, is part of what the university called its “final formal offer” to the union, presented in September. The 6.7-percent decrease over an 18-month period is equal to a 5-percent pay cut over two years that the administration had on the table at the time. The union’s counteroffer was to accept the 5-percent salary reductions for fiscal years 2010 and 2011 if the offer came with a four-year contract that included significant pay raises in the following two years.
The administration rejected the counteroffer, saying it couldn’t agree to the pay increases because the state’s finances are uncertain. The university’s decision to impose its proposed pay cuts anyway shows that the administration “may not be aware of the strength of our union and the support that the union has,” Ms. Chesney-Lind says. “It’s not like we haven’t won in court before. It’s not like we’ve never struck before.”
Indeed, the faculty union at Hawaii walked the picket line in 2001, along with schoolteachers. The higher-education strike lasted 13 days and shut down public education in the state.
The union’s contract, which an arbitrator agreed is still in force until a new one replaces it, prohibits professors from striking. But professors can voice their displeasure in other ways. For instance, last semester Ms. Chesney-Lind participated in a campus teach-in about state education budget cuts. And one-day walkouts, she said, are another option.
Ms. Greenwood says that she and her administration do value faculty members and their work. The pay cuts, she says, were imposed “very reluctantly. We have the deepest respect for our faculty.”
Litigation isn’t what the system wants, she says, “but we don’t have the money to keep paying the faculty at the current levels.”
But even as negotiators on both sides say they hope an agreement can be worked out, some faculty members, Ms. Sharma among them, have begun to detach themselves from the university.
“I’ve heard people say, ‘Why should I sit on this committee, why should I add more students to my classroom?,’” says Ms. Sharma, in her fourth year at the Manoa campus. “Once you detach yourself from being at a certain place, what you’re thinking about is your next job.”
It’s not surprising to Ms. Greenwood that some faculty members are beginning to job hunt when, she says, “you can’t increase their pay in the way you think they deserve.”
Still, she says the system will try to retain professors who are “really core and essential to our programs’ success.” Ms. Sharma, who came to Hawaii from an institution in Canada, says she’s thinking globally for her next move. And although the market is tough, “it’s not impossible,” she says. “I don’t feel stuck here at all.”