Historic Underfunding, Redressment and a Sense of Ourselves

By Mike McIntyre, Psychology

The University has struggled, since shortly after its transformation from United College, with a funding base more suited to a college within a university than to an independent university.  This under-funding has restricted the budgetary freedom of the University to bring our salaries in line with similarly sized and mandated universities.  It is very much in the interest of the administration to have salaries for faculty and staff that are distributively just.  Just salaries enhance recruitment and retention and foster morale.  The monies available to redress injustice, however, are limited.  Grant and tuition increases typically allow us barely to keep pace with inflationary pressures and provide very little room for discretionary improvements.  The main source of funds beyond the percentage growth provided by changes to the grant and tuition monies is provided by fall-in from the existing budget.  For example, the retirement or resignation of a senior professor who is replaced by a junior professor may save as much as $75K in salary and benefits. This type of fall-in constitutes the major source of funds for the University to make progress—perhaps, tediously slow progress— toward institutional goals. What is required is a commitment by the University to establish a distributively just salary structure and to make reaching this goal an institutional priority.  The more senior amongst us may remember that Dr. Duckworth made such a commitment and that it motivated the 12% increase in the first Collective Agreement.  Every nook and cranny in the University’s budget was searched to secure adequate resources.  Essentially, all the fall-in for a period of years was devoted to making the salary structure of the first Collective Agreement possible.

Monies from fall-in and revenue increases fund, beyond salary improvements, many changes to the budget base.  Increases in the administrative complement, the top-up of positions that are partially funded by external monies, operating expenses associated with new capital projects, increased financial aid, and expenses for innovation all depend on fall-in revenues.  That the Employer accepted the University of Manitoba salary structure in the most recent Collective Agreement is hugely important.  It would be very difficult to mount an administrative argument that asserts that this is a distributively just salary structure, but we are not prepared to place actual salaries on the structure.  In addition to establishing a foundation for future negotiation and making progress, however slight, toward catch-up the bargaining process revealed several significant strengths.

The relationship that emerged with our students was absolutely extraordinary.  Their palpable support, despite the possibility for hardship, contributed to the strength we felt.  Salary inequities reflect historic under-funding, but so too does the fact that our students pay a higher percentage of the costs of their education than students elsewhere.  They often deal with facilities and services that do not compare well with those that exist elsewhere.  A career and employment centre comes immediately to mind.  Our student body has one of the highest proportions of students who are of the first generation of their families to attend university.  We also have one of the highest proportions of part-time students in the nation.  Such students are likely to need more academic and financial support than the more economically advantaged.  The political influence of the united voices of students and faculty will be greater than either in isolation.  It is in the interest of both the students and the faculty to nurture the community that emerged during bargaining.

Perhaps the most significant strength to emerge was a sense of ourselves.  I recall vividly the reaction in the ratification meeting when it was observed that the Collective Agreement was a first step in reclaiming our university.  This recognition must be much more than a pleasant moment. It should be a prescription for change.  Perhaps reaffirming the role of the Senate in governance and development would be a place to start.  Nothing prevents the faculty and student members of Senate from insisting that Senate approve all academic development.  There is nothing preventing student and faculty members of the Board elected from Senate to insist that the costs to existing programs of new positions, programs and capital development be made explicit.  There is nothing to prevent all of the academic departments and interdisciplinary programs from insisting that we be known and that our priorities be included in planning.

The government is not likely to provide the University with an unrestricted redressment grant.  It is much more likely to fund specific new projects that are needed.  The university’s Writing Program (now the Department of Rhetoric, Writing and Communications) was initially funded as part of a redressment initiative.  Only when all sectors of the University are involved in planning and development will we be able to approach the government with proposals that can reinitiate the redressment process.  Many of the new capital initiatives have been badly needed.  Perhaps we could argue that the University has secured unprecedented levels of private funding to make these facilities possible and that maintenance and replacement funding should match these successes.  There is nothing that would prevent the administration adding its voice to an approach calling for redressment of historic under-funding.  Successful targeted funding will increase the degrees of freedom within the budget and move us closer to distributively just conditions for the entire University of Winnipeg community.