In April, members of the United Faculty and Academic Staff of UW-Eau Claire approved a resolution at the spring General Membership Meeting asking the administration to improve its budget transparency and to address long-standing inequities in salary for faculty and academic staff.
The resolution was approved unanimously on April 18, 2014 and sent to the University Senate, where it was received as an announcement. One month later, in his end-of-the-year message to faculty and staff (sent May 27), Chancellor Schmidt listed "Sustainable and transparent budgeting" as one of the four high-priority inititatives for the university, writing: "We must make our budgeting process understandable to all and develop realistic budgets based on institutional priorities. This includes finding ways to begin closing the gap between what we pay faculty and staff compared to what peer institutions pay."
While it would be a bit audacious to take credit for the Chancellor's choice to include budgetary transparency and staff compensation as an institutional priority, we are glad to see that the Chancellor shares our concerns. So how do we, as a campus community, actually address these issues? The resolution passed by the General Membership has five suggestions. Here is the text:
Be it resolved that:
- The Chancellor and Provost shall present in writing a detailed budget to the UWEC community via the University Senate at the beginning and end of each academic year. The detailed budget shall contain revenue and spending plans for current and future fiscal years at the level of departments/units/centers or the equivalent;
- The Chancellor shall make a presentation regarding compensation and related issues at a fall meeting of faculty and academic staff;
- Salary dollars shall not be diverted to other areas; funds in the overall salary pool for Faculty and Academic Staff shall no longer decrease;
- To address equity and compression, special and biennial pay plans shall be designed with transparency, and with explicit input from all stakeholders, including the Senate Compesation Committee and Department Chairs as well as Faculty and Academic Staff at large;
- Unrecognized merit rankings from years past shall be acknowledged in future pay plans.
We invite the UWEC administration to consider these as starting points for future work to address this ongoing issue.
For a full text of the resolution, click here: 
compensation_res_4_18_14_12.pdf.