Message from UUP President Fred Kowal
To UUP Members
April 25, 2019
The 2016-2022 State/UUP Agreement earmarks one-half of the discretionary salary pools (or 0.5% of total UUP bargaining unit basic annual salaries at each campus) in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 for distribution to address salary compression and inversion. The first of these distributions must occur by December 31, 2019. (Article 20.8, 20.10, 20.12 and 20.13)
Appendix A-41 to the 2016-22 Agreement provides that the guidelines and methodology for analyzing the extent of salary compression and inversion at each campus will be developed in executive-level discussions between UUP, SUNY and the Governor’s Office of Employee Relations (GOER). The results of these analyses will be utilized in distributing these funds to address identified compression and inversion.
Since October 2018, UUP has met steadily with SUNY and GOER to develop these guidelines and methodologies. We have made significant progress, but more work remains to be done.
To assure that campuses will not be overwhelmed by the work necessary to complete the salary analyses, SUNY officials recently met with HR representatives from all campuses to brief them on some of the data that must be collected to prepare for the analyses. Campuses were directed to begin collecting this data. If you hear about these efforts at your campus, please understand that this data collection effort is the beginning, not the end, of the process, and that statewide executive-level discussions continue.
We will inform the UUP membership when we reach final agreement on the guidelines and methodology for the salary analyses. We expect work to continue through the spring and summer months, with more details available at the start of the fall 2019 semester.
Salary compression occurs when there is little or no difference in pay – but significant differences in skill level, responsibility, qualifications, or seniority. Salary inversion occurs when salary compression, left unadjusted, results in new hires and less senior employees receiving salaries that are greater than more senior co-workers. Salary compression arises generally from a combination of factors including market forces disproportionately impacting starting salaries and insufficient pay increases tied to promotion and years of service
