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Pay Equity Cases Resolved
At the University of Colorado, administrators established a funding pool of $80,000 after they realized that a 2 percent gap in pay existed between comparably qualified male and female professors during the 1999–2000 academic year. Additional amounts will be distributed this year and next, according to university spokesperson Cheryl Brazeau. Final budgets are not set, but about $160,000 will probably be spent each year. The funds will be distributed unevenly among female professors as merit awards rather than awarded across the board, says Brazeau.
Salary inequities based on gender discrimination were also the basis of lawsuits recently resolved in Ohio, New York, and Minnesota. In November Kent State University in Ohio settled a gender-discrimination case with the U.S. Department of Labor. The Kent State AAUP chapter initiated the case in 1993 on behalf of about 150 women professors after studies showed that women faculty at Kent State were typically paid less and promoted more slowly than male professors in comparable positions and with comparable research records.
In 1995 the Department of Labor agreed that the evidence pointed to gender discrimination in promotions for about eighty of the professors, and the settlement has been under negotiation since that time. Under the terms of the settlement, twenty-four current and former female faculty members (one of whom is now dead) were awarded one-time payments from Kent State. Individual awards ranged from $2,000 to $12,500, according to Beth Swadener, a Kent State professor and chair of the Kent State AAUP chapter’s Committee on the Status of Women.
In December a federal jury ruled that the State University of New York College at Buffalo had violated the Equal Pay Act by paying Radha Simhadri $11,000 less than a male counterpart, according to newspaper reports. She was a professor in the college’s speech, language pathology, and audiology department when she filed suit in 1995. SUNY and Simhadri are expected to work out a financial settlement roughly equal to the pay Simhadri lost over a three-year period. "Pay equity problems can be solved without the kind of litigation involved in this case," comments Thomas Kriger, director of research and legislation for United University Professions (UUP), the collective bargaining agent for twenty-nine SUNY campuses. He says the UUP, which was not involved in Simhadri’s case, "works hard to negotiate contract provisions that allocate funds to administrations to correct salary inequities."
The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System tentatively agreed last fall to settle a suit initiated in 1996 by five female faculty members at St. Cloud State University. It became a class-action case when other faculty members joined in the complaint. The professors alleged that they were paid less and promoted less swiftly than comparably qualified male colleagues.
According to the terms of the settlement, the university agreed to pay a total of $600,000 in back pay to about 250 women who were faculty members at St. Cloud State between 1992 and 1998, and to pay four of the original plaintiffs a total of $60,000. Sixty current female faculty members are eligible for raises totaling $170,786. The university also agreed to give new faculty members information about how it sets salaries and to establish a program to teach administrators how to avoid perceived discrimination. The settlement is subject to final court approval in March.
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