Online survey: Study under way on contingent academics—The Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW) is kicking off a major survey of contingent faculty, instructors and researchers, including graduate employees.

The survey is the first national study of its kind to examine salaries, benefits, course assignments, and general working conditions facing contingent academic employees.

The survey will collect institution-specific and course-specific information to create a more textured and realistic picture of contingent academic workers’ working lives and working conditions.

CAW hopes that a sufficient number of respondents will complete the survey, which will help CAW develop a rich dataset that will be available to CAW member organizations to advocate on behalf of professional compensation and working conditions for the contingent academic workforce.

UUP’s national affiliate, the America Federation of Teachers, is an active participant in CAW. To take the survey, go to www.surveymonkey.com/s/VNNNRVS.

And AFT’s survey says: State worker wage growth flat; gap persists—A standard talking point among some politicians, pundits and anti-government groups masked as think tanks is that government employees make more money than private-sector workers.

Not so, according to the 2010 AFT Public Employees Compensation Survey of state government jobs, which is the only national survey of its kind. In fact, the survey’s authors found that private-sector occupations that have a comparable match in state government earn at least 20 percent more on average. The gap between private- and public-sector pay is much larger in some occupations. On average, an attorney working for the government earns 57 cents for every dollar earned by a private-sector lawyer; a government-paid chemist earns 65 cents for every dollar earned by a private-sector chemist; and a government-paid librarian earns only 74 cents for every dollar earned by a private-sector librarian.

The survey, released every September, reflects pay rates in effect March 1 of the same year for 45 professional, scientific and related occupations in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

For the first time since the AFT started publishing the survey in 2000, wage growth was virtually flat, up an average of 0.4 percent to $47,245.