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[hegemony]

I've been out of town on sabbatical for a year.  I come back to find that four people in my department tell me that they got a raise.  Our salaries are frozen, but apparently our section of the university got a grant that has something to do with faculty productivity, and so a large scattering of people got one-time raises.  Needless to say, a raise around here is like finding a bottle of Evian in the Sahara, so I'm eager not to miss out.  Some of my colleagues report that everyone got a small raise and some people got big ones; others report that only some got any raise at all (but all the ones reporting did). I don't know what's accurate.  There was no public announcement; each person just got a letter with a little note about the grant and their salary increase.

So when I got back I searched all my departmental mail and I see nothing about a raise.  My pay statement looks no different.  I conclude that I was behind the door when the raises got passed out.  My old self would have sat tight and expected (erroneously) to be rewarded for being Good and Patient.  My new self, however, lives by the mandate, "You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate."  And I've got nothing to lose by inquiring, right?  If worst comes to worst, I'm left without a raise, which is exactly where I am now.

The problem is that I don't wholly get along with the department chair.  We clashed over a debate about a university requirement, which she saw as benefiting only certain faculty (e.g. me) at the expense of others.  Well, I didn't see it that way, and the requirement was passed, and we've been polite to each other since then, but I can tell I'm not on her list of very favorite bestest pals.

So how do I approach her to inquire diplomatically and, if necessary, persuasively about this raise?

[caesura]

Can you find out who the lucky ones got their letters from?  If it was from someone other than the chair (i.e., a dean), perhaps you could go straight to that person.

[hegemony]

It was the chair.

[tenured_feminist]

First of all, go figure out exactly what you're dealing with. If you're at a public university, salaries are likely public information, and you can probably go to the library and ask for the salary book for your institution. The raise is recent enough that it's likely logged.

Once you are armed with more information, write a brief, polite email to your chair requesting a meeting, along the lines of, "I understand that Professors A, B, and C were awarded merit raises last spring while I was still on sabbatical. I would like to discuss this with you." Then have a brief, useless meeting with the chair in which you discuss the extent to which the raises granted were in accordance with your department's merit pay plan (which is hopefully something other than "let the chair decide.")

Once you have gone through channels in this fashion, you can legitimately complain to the dean that you were screwed. Assuming, of course, that this is  what you discover, which sounds likely.

Good luck. Do what you can, too, to detach from this emotionally. It's too easy, in an environment where merit pay is rarely distributed and at random intervals, to let a merit pay award get tied up in your head with your worth as a scholar and/or your status in your department's hierarchy.

And when you do get to the dean, be sure you're pleading your case on the basis of the extraordinary circumstance of being left out because you were on sabbatical. The dean likely spent about a month dealing with aggrieved people in your unit right after the letters came out.

[concordancia]

Our raises came from the university and there was a fairly long list of rules of who could get one. One of the rules was based on evaluations during <some period>. If that wording was in the grant, you may not have been eligible because of your sabbatical.

In the meantime, have a meeting with the chair, as it is also possible that this was a case of out of sight, out of mind.

[snowbound]

"Faculty productivity"?  So presumably that means scholarly production rather than, say, teaching excellence.  And most likely we're talking about in the recent period, right?  During a leave of absence, a person is not productive, so no special merit increase for productivity.  Maybe that's why you didn't get the raise. You weren't there.  Sounds reasonable

But hold on a second!  You weren't on a leave of absence, you were on a sabbatical!  And this reason for your absence may have been ignored overlooked (accidentally or deliberately) by the chair.  I assume you were granted the sabbatical on the basis of research you undertook to do, so your appeal should mention that the sabbatical committee recognized the value of your research.  And then you should outline, as impressively as possible, all the research work you were able to accomplish over the last year.  You should also show how this fits into your record of productivity over the last (insert # of years since last raise), and your ongoing research agenda.  In this way, your sabbatical becomes a strength.  Not:  I was overlooked for a research productivity raise because I was off campus. Instead: Because I was 100% occupied with productive research, ironically, I was overlooked for a research productivity raise. 

Go straight to the Dean with this. You do not know (officially) that the decision was made by the Chair.  BUt do not present this as some sort of feud between you and the Chair, as the default position for the Dean will be to support the Chair.  You can innocently assume that it was an accidental oversight--out of sight, out of mind, and that whoever it was made the decision no doubt was unaware that you are in the top 20% (or whatever) of the department in terms of productivity.

Of course all this is assuming that you did not while away your year eating bonbons and watching reality TV . . .

[hulkhogan]

Way to increase morale in your department! Your administrators sound smart.

[shrek]

I don't know why you haven't marched into your chair's office and asked, "why the f*** didn't I get a raise?"
I know that's the second thing I would have done (first I would have fumed).

[offthemarket]

If you're unionized, talk to your union rep.

[philo]

Talk to your chair first, even if you aren't BFFs. Not following chain of command might give her a legitimate reason to chew you out. Your dean might also not appreciate having to deal with someone that could have been handled at the departmental level. Of course, if you're not satisfied with the chair's answer then going to the dean next is entirely legitimate.

[tenured_feminist]

Talk to your chair first, even if you aren't BFFs. Not following chain of command might give her a legitimate reason to chew you out. Your dean might also not appreciate having to deal with someone that could have been handled at the departmental level. Of course, if you're not satisfied with the chair's answer then going to the dean next is entirely legitimate.

Agreed. Going over the chair's head immediately not only may not solve the problem, but also buys you more trouble down the line.

[regular_joe]

<bump>

Heg, can you give an update?

[hegemony]

The update: I couldn't face going to the chair, but I found myself in a conversation with someone who has another administrative position in the department, so I did a supposedly casual humorous routine about how so-and-so had said we were all getting raises. I joked about how excited I would be: "Does this mean I can afford a second pencil?!" and so on. And then I remarked casually that I supposed actually I'd missed getting a raise since I'd been away.  The person didn't give away that he might have seen through my strategy for ferreting out information; he just said, "Oh no, I'm sure you got one. It wouldn't have been much because the most anyone got was [not too large an amount]."  It's hard for me to tell as our paychecks have been adjusted because we're on a different health plan this year and other variables have changed.  So it will take me a while to figure out how much the raise was, assuming my informant was right. But I'm very relieved that apparently I didn't miss out on the only pittance that will be coming our way for a while.

[totoro]

Your "paystub" should have the pretax and deductions salary on it. We can access all of ours online.

[hegemony]

Yes, but September was not a full month for us, so I can't tell what a regular month's salary would be yet.