Are members of the Clark College faculty union paying attention to what’s going on beyond their campus, like, say, in Olympia? It’s hard to tell.
For their edification and that of the readers, here’s just one thing that happened in Olympia on Saturday: $26.4 million was cut from state funding for community and technical colleges. Legislators made that devastating decision in a one-day special session. At Clark College, though, members of the faculty union want more money … in their paychecks.
Overall, legislators on Saturday cut about $700 million from the state’s 2009-2011 budget, and the grim news is going to get worse. A revenue shortfall estimated at around $5 billion is anticipated for the 2011-2013 biennium. Meanwhile, the message from the Clark College faculty: Pay us more.
Compare their plight to that of others: Before the axes stopped falling Saturday, the state’s disabled poor saw a 20 percent reduction in cash grants, non-emergency adult dental care for those in need was eliminated, and $46 million was carved out of the state prison budget. Those were just some of the excruciating cuts. Clearly, the state is in deep financial trouble.
No one should be surprised that members of the Clark College faculty union are complaining about salaries. That’s the union’s job. But part of college President Bob Knight’s job is balancing a budget, and as he has said, “Everyone’s going to feel the pain in this; it’s going to be ugly. The reality is, (faculty union negotiators) just don’t like the options and they’re not willing to compromise.”
Our take is equally blunt: To feel no salary increase is not to feel pain. Thousands of laid-off folks in Clark County would love to have a zero-sum salary dilemma to worry about. The faculty union members, though, apparently believe to not receive salary-grid step increases in three years is pain. Their concerns erode when placed on a scale relative to other Washingtonians who are losing vital state programs and services.
Clark College’s salary schedule for full-time faculty ranges from $43,960 annually for Range A (22 faculty members) to $67,058 for Range H (47 faculty members). For those numbers not to have changed significantly in three years might denote frustration … but not pain.
Faculty union officials note that revenue and enrollment have soared at Clark, and they claim that a 14.4 percent tuition increase over the past two years has produced “excess tuition” at Clark, which they, of course, want part of. Even if there is excess money from tuition, the money should not go to faculty but back to students as tuition reductions. But before faculty union members or anyone else gets too excited about tuition revenue, they should heed Knight’s warning that the Legislature could impose even deeper funding reductions of up to 15 percent in the next two years.
As Howard Buck reported in Monday’s Columbian, unlike at four-year institutions, faculty at two-year schools get no cut of tuition revenue to support their collectively bargained salary grids. Community college faculty leaders say they will lobby the Legislature to receive that same cut, but here’s a more reasonable argument for equality: Perhaps faculty at four-year universities should be like two-year colleges in terms of not getting a cut of tuition.
These days, families, businesses and state governments are struggling just to hang onto what money they’ve got. When negotiators for the Clark College faculty union ask for more money, they excuse themselves from the shared-sacrifice commitment. The rest of the state government — especially budget writers — would love to be excused from that dreadful march, but they know better. They’re living in the real world.
