April 14, 2011
Council approves salary recommendation
by Erin Rosacker
P&S staff survey
Members of the Professional and Scientific Council approved a resolution on salary adjustments for fiscal year 2012 at their April 7 meeting. The vote followed the council's review of feedback from the latest (April 2011) P&S staff survey.
The resolution supports salary increases for employees with satisfactory or better performance appraisals, and recommends using additional funds for market and equity gaps, performance rewards and retention needs. It also calls for benefit levels to remain the same, a reference to the temporary reduction last year in the university's TIAA-CREF contributions and an increase in employee's health care insurance costs.
Some discussion surrounded a proposed amendment from Mike Miller, information technology officer in the College of Design. The amendment would have added the statement that "every effort" be made in "maintaining current staffing levels."
"It is a very nice sentiment, but it's not possible," said executive vice president and provost Elizabeth Hoffman. "You're putting in something that I can't enforce and it's not possible for units to enforce. There are going to be units like the [Agriculture and Home Economics] Experiment Station and Extension that are going to suffer very large losses in their budget."
The amendment failed to pass, but the resolution passed 34-4. It is the first agenda item this year that did not receive unanimous approval.
Other business
A motion in favor of the conflicts of interest and commitment draft policy was introduced and will be voted on next month. The policy, which cleared the Faculty Senate on April 5, outlines employee disclosure of external activities that may impact performance of duty, objectivity and appropriate use of state resources.
