On Feb. 20, Gov. Phil Bredesen released his budget for the 2007-08 fiscal year, which calls for a 1 percent salary raise and a 2 percent bonus for all faculty and staff in higher education statewide.
University of Tennessee President John Petersen’s budget for the same period previously requested a 5 percent raise for all faculty and staff of the University of Tennessee system. The 5 percent raise Petersen requested amounts to $23.5 million.
Tom Smith, president of the Knoxville chapter of the United Campus Workers-Communication Workers of America, said he disapproves of Bredesen’s proposal.
“It’s completely unacceptable,” Smith said. “At the very least, higher education employees should receive a cost of living raise.”
Smith also heads the UCW-CWA for the Chattanooga campus. Union officials are requesting a minimum raise to meet hikes in cost of living expenses, which increased by 3.2 percent last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the branch of the federal government that measures inflation and national employment trends.
“The governor has consistently left out higher education employees when it’s come to pay raises,” Smith said.
The Daily Beacon previously reported the university president’s interest in the 5 percent raise. Seeking to get state legislature approval, Petersen will average two days a week in Nashville pushing for the budget and the pay raise until the budget passes in the Tennessee General Assembly.
“It’s important that they see what we’re doing and how we’re doing it,” Petersen said of his Nashville visits during an interview last month.
The university community is unsure if the 1 percent raise will be funded by the state or if institutions will have to increase tuition to cover it.
The governor has been prone to negotiate pay raises in the past, Smith said. He has been willing to convert suggested bonuses into permanent pay raises with legislative approval.
In 2006, the UT-Knoxville administration covered a 1 percent raise using general university funds in addition to the state’s salary increases for higher education employees that ranged between 1 and 2 percent last year.
“I would like a $1,500 a year raise. I wish it could be more. I don’t think the 1 percent is acceptable. I take it as an insult,” said Elizabeth Young, a senior library specialist at the John C. Hodges Main Library and member of UCW-CWA.
Young said the 1 percent raise would add $260 to her yearly earnings whereas at least $1,500 is needed to match living costs for the lowest tier of campus workers. The president’s budget requests a raise of 5 percent or $600, whichever is greater.
If UT employees do receive a 5 percent raise, it would only match the cost of living incurred in 2006. It would not account for the years that inflation increased and employees did not receive a raise.
“At five percent, you would be ahead of the cost of living. But, it doesn’t make up for the ground we’ve lost in the last couple of years when we didn’t meet cost of living,” said Denise Barlow, vice chancellor for finance and administration.
The bulk of the governor’s budget appropriates funds to K-12 education, totaling $584 million. That money will be channeled into teacher raises and an increase in the value of HOPE scholarships among other initiatives.
An additional $505 million is requested for construction projects on campuses across the state, including the Cherokee Campus in Knoxville. Ranked a top priority in Petersen’s budget request, UT is slated to receive $32 million for the proposed campus, a research-focused neighborhood to be located near the main Knoxville university.
UCW-CWA is an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations and its Knoxville chapter is planning a March 13 trip to Nashville to lobby the legislature for a more substantial pay raise, the union’s officials said.
