A Pocket Guide to Negotiating Your Small-College Contract

Choose your team well and know how to do research, and you’ll be successful.

By Elaine Rizzo, David Guerra, and Jay Pitocchelli

Compensation discussions should be approached as a two-phase process. What happens before you meet with the administration is just as important as what happens in formal discussions.

Before You Start Talking

First, the faculty committee needs to become familiar with nationwide faculty salary trends. “Don’t Blame Faculty” showed a large disparity between increases in 2003–04 tuition and fees (14 percent for public institutions and 6 percent for private institutions) and the growth in the average faculty salary (2.1 percent).

To complete the context for comparisons, a faculty committee should also study the relationship between salary increases and the real net cost of tuition (tuition and financial aid) published annually by the College Board. We found remarkable similarities between increases in real net tuition and faculty salaries, suggesting that although colleges continue to increase their published tuition, they also boost their financial aid packages to keep the real cost of college at a rate that parallels inflation. This strategy may influence the overall plan for the financial assets of the college and faculty salary increases.² This information is useful for a faculty negotiating team. Here are some other points to take into consideration.

Faculty committee dynamics

Put together a team of faculty colleagues, from different ranks and disciplines if possible, who bring diverse skills to the table. It would be helpful if one or more members had a statistical background. The members should take time to get to know one another’s work and communication styles. Compensation discussions require members to assume various roles and responsibilities, and determining each person’s area of interest and skills will allow you to divide tasks effectively. But keep in mind that faculty members still have to do their day jobs while they are negotiators, so their time is limited.

Communication with previous faculty team

Talk to the faculty members who negotiated the previous contract at your institution. What procedures did they follow? Which arguments and strategies did they find most and least effective? Did they collect and analyze data on salaries and benefits from previous years? If so, do the data still exist? Trace the history of faculty salaries and benefits on your campus in relation to changing economic, demographic, and institutional conditions. Find out whether any commitments were made to past committees. Was a time frame established for accomplishing any collectively agreed upon goals? How do the goals fit into long-range institutional planning and development? Look for a paper trail—such commitments may exist in correspondence or minutes from earlier committee meetings. Faculty compensation does not exist in a vacuum; it is part of the overall plan for institutional growth. College administrators view it in this context, and faculty compensation committees must do the same.

Background Information

Learn about the needs and concerns of the faculty. The demographic profile of the faculty may yield different perspectives on faculty priorities. For example, an older faculty member may be most concerned about a strong retirement package or early retirement incentives, while salary increases and health-care benefits may matter more to younger faculty members. It helps to conduct a survey (through Web-based or paper forms, e-mail, or word of mouth) to determine faculty priorities in terms of salary, benefits, and general working conditions. A survey will provide the information you require to develop a compensation package that will meet the needs of most faculty on your campus.

Your role

You need to know the legal context of your situation. Private colleges face unique conditions that do not exist for faculty at public institutions in states that have legislation permitting public employees, including faculty, to unionize. Due to the 1980 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in National Labor Relations Board v. Yeshiva University, faculty in private colleges who share managerial responsibilities with the administration cannot unionize or enter into collective bargaining agreements under the National Labor Relations Act. Small private colleges often rely on a faculty governing organization (such as a faculty senate) to represent the faculty in discussions with the administration about compensation and other matters. A faculty senate does not have the same status as a union formed under authorizing legislation. But such faculty bodies, especially if backed politically by a strong AAUP chapter, can enter into discussions with an administration from a position of strength.

The fact that faculty bodies lack the formal power to negotiate like unions can place a faculty team at a disadvantage. Administrators are educated, trained, skilled, and experienced in contract development. Union negotiators possess similar skills and experience that make them a match for an administrative negotiating committee. Outside of traditional collective bargaining, faculty representatives often lack training and may have never before participated in contract discussions. To avoid coming to the table severely outmatched, faculty must learn the basic dynamics of the negotiation process. Doing so will help to offset an otherwise unequal balance of power. Seek advice from someone with expertise in negotiations. Some charitable educational organizations provide consultants to assist and train faculty groups in the basic principles of negotiation (in our part of the world, for example, the Labor Guild of the Archdiocese of Boston offers such services). Also, if the administration and faculty have agreed to use an interest-based approach, in which the two parties work as a team to achieve a shared goal, a facilitator is often retained to assist the group in finding common ground.

Professional conduct

Decide in advance how you will conduct yourselves individually and as a group during meetings with the administration. Although the joint administrative-faculty committee will establish ground rules together, the faculty team should do so independently as well. It should also develop a shared understanding of the self-discipline that will be required of team members in order to follow the rules it adopts. Will the group choose a primary speaker? Which member will be responsible for speaking to which issues? Agree to resist the urge to raise new issues at the discussion table unless the team has agreed upon them in advance. Decide in advance not to interrupt a team member who has the floor and to wear your poker face (that is, do not verbally or physically react to offers or proposals, because such reactions can be construed as acceptance or rejection). Never consider any offers at the discussion table—take them away for discussion among team members in private.

Research

Faculty will have to do some research, especially those of you who will present components of the proposed compensation package, and you will need data to support your positions. The first step is to compile a list of institutions that are similar to your college and that provide a valid comparison for competitive compensation packages. Several sources of information can be used to create this list. Start with the list used in earlier compensation discussions. Previous lists may, however, be of limited use, because institutions change over time. Next, find out which institutions your admissions office considers competitors. You may also want to use third-party compilations, such as that of U.S. News and World Report. To round out your research, look for other sources of information from your institution, including planning documents, accreditation reports, published mission statements, and public statements released by the administration describing the college’s identity.

Once the working group agrees on a list of comparable institutions, the discussion will shift to the target compensation package. It is common to compare the average salary by rank at one’s own institution with the average salary by rank at comparable colleges. We advise that you express salaries at your institution by rank as percentages of the list’s average salaries by rank. The same method can be applied to compensation packages (salary plus benefits). The AAUP publishes this information in its annual survey of faculty compensation. Limited data from recent years is also available on the Web site of the Chronicle of Higher Education through a partnership between the AAUP and the Chronicle.

During Discussions

You are now ready to meet with the administration to discuss compensation. At the first meeting of the joint faculty-administration committee, you will establish the procedures and ground rules for the group to follow. One procedure might be for each side to agree to come to the table with a list of demands and offers. Discussions can then move toward the center to create a package that reflects a compromise. The disadvantage of this approach is that it can easily become confrontational. There is an alternative.

Working groups

Small liberal arts colleges are too small for an “us versus them” attitude. We recommend an interest-based bargaining approach. Although in reality one team from the administration represents the institution, and a separate team represents the faculty, both groups work toward the same goal: a good compensation package that the institution can afford.

A successful outcome depends on the ability of faculty and administration to communicate openly and candidly with one another. Members of the joint committee need to develop trust and confidence in one another, just as the members of the faculty team did, if discussions are to be productive and timely. To foster this sense of trust, it may seem reasonable to agree to strict confidentiality of discussions. Confidentiality would, however, mean that you could not talk to colleagues outside the faculty team to reassess your goals and priorities. The faculty team will not be formally empowered to negotiate, so offers and counteroffers must be discussed with the senate and, possibly, the entire faculty. One solution would be to agree that the faculty team would report back to its constituency in accordance with accepted standards of professional ethics and conduct.

Your true constituency

You need to determine who your constituency really is. At a small, liberal arts college, all parties may agree in principle that you represent the faculty. However, because certain changes in compensation must, by law, be extended to all personnel, the administration will consider the fiscal impact of proposed increases on the college’s budget if they are applied to all campus employees, not just faculty. Find out which changes would apply only to faculty—this information might be essential in deciding whether to give priority to increases in salaries over benefits in the total compensation package.

The proposal

The faculty committee is responsible for articulating the components of the compensation package. Your initial research into comparable institutions becomes critically important when you set out to accomplish this task. Ultimately, the entire joint committee must agree on which institutions are comparable and on which to compare with yours. Administrators rely on standard databases in the budget and planning process of which faculty might be unaware. Find out what data the administration can and will supply about your own campus and others; this information will save countless hours of research.

The whole package

Although salary is a large part of the compensation package, it is still only one part of it. Many of our colleagues indicated that the retirement contribution by the institution was at least as important as a raise in salary. Colleges differ in their retirement contribution strategies. Some colleges contribute a fixed amount for each faculty member.

Others match employee contributions up to a certain ceiling, and yet others combine a fixed amount with a matching program. We recommend that you seek matching contributions as a good compromise. They give faculty an incentive to contribute as much as they can to their own retirement. But because not all faculty members can take full advantage of the match, the administration’s contribution may not be as burdensome as it would be if it provided a high fixed contribution. Faculty also cited as important rising health-care costs, including copayment amounts and prescription drug prices; unexpected health-care costs can easily erase any gains in salary. Younger faculty members with families were especially interested in a strong dental program.

Contract length

Contracts typically extend from one to three years. Economic climates change, however, and the direction of change is difficult to predict. Raise this issue with your constituency when a final proposal is under consideration. It is common sense to lock into a good package for as long as possible; the opposite is true of a weak package.

With a lot of research and some good colleagues at your side, you can negotiate a package that will work for the faculty at your institution. Good luck!

Notes

1. Each year, the AAUP conducts a national survey of faculty compensation, published in the March–April issue of Academe as the Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession. Back to text

2. See http://www.anselm.edu/hompage/jpitocch/academe/
salaries.htmlfor a description of our results and how we analyzed trends. Back to text

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