UNI union objects to extra pay policy

CEDAR RAPIDS - The University of Northern Iowa's faculty union has filed a complaint with the state over a new policy limiting the amount of special compensation professors can get for taking on extra duties.

Faculty leaders say they didn't know about the nearly year-old policy until The Gazette asked them about it last month. The policy, which limits overload pay to 20 percent of base salary, should have been discussed as part of UNI's collective bargaining process with United Faculty, union leaders said.

“When policies that affect faculty are not negotiated with faculty and not well published, it increases the chances for misuse, favoritism and exploitation of the policies,” union leaders wrote in an article for the group's upcoming newsletter.

The complaint, filed Nov. 23 with the Iowa Public Employment Relations Board against the state Board of Regents, asks that UNI abandon the policy and pay employees for losses since it was put in place.

Union leaders say special compensation - also called overload - is not fairly distributed, with some UNI faculty receiving up to $7,500 for teaching an extra course while others get a few hundred dollars for shorter time commitments.

“If you broke it down, I was getting maybe $8 an hour,” said Linda Walsh, a UNI associate psychology professor who was paid $250 for taking over three weeks of a lecture course for a colleague who went on maternity leave in Spring 2010.

Walsh, who has taught psychology at UNI for 35 years, was glad to help out, but thinks faculty should be paid at the same rate for taking on extra teaching duties.

Virginia Arthur, UNI associate provost for faculty affairs, said the compensation policy, implemented in January, is an offshoot of a 1970s policy on extra income for faculty.

Activities eligible for special compensation under the new policy include participating in off-hour faculty-development activities, giving special lectures, covering teaching duties for a sick colleague for more than a week, developing new courses, grading students in independent study courses and “any other activities approved in advance” by administrators.

The policy does not define the pay rates for extra duties, but Arthur said the standard rate for teaching an overload three-credit course at UNI is $4,389. UNI professors can also get $3,000 for each online course they create and $1,000 for completing a training program on delivering high-quality online courses.

A list of about 360 UNI faculty who received overload pay in fiscal 2011 shows that at least one business professor was paid $7,500 for teaching a summer course in Hong Kong. Other professors were paid amounts like $5,289 and $10,241 for overload teaching without an explanation of how many courses that includes.

Gary Gute, an associate professor in UNI's School of Applied Human Sciences, knew about the new compensation policy because it reduced the number of online courses he could teach.

Gute was paid $15,778 in fiscal 2011, which was 28 percent of his base salary.

He received $6,000 for developing two online courses, $1,000 for taking the online training program and $8,778 for teaching two online course sections - both of which were full with waiting lists.

“If the system permitted me to teach a second online course, I would be willing to do that,” Gute said.

United Faculty doesn't like the 20 percent limit because it could hurt faculty who make lower base salaries. A professor whose base salary is $40,000 would be limited to $8,000 a year in overload under the 20 percent limit. Yet, if this professor taught the allowed two overload courses per year, he or she should be paid $8,778.

Overload policies are a patchwork across the country, said John Curtis, director of research and public policy for the American Association of University Professors.

“I don't think there's agreement on how to handle overload compensation,” Curtis said.

Purdue University, for example, caps overload pay to 20 percent of base salary for faculty with 12-month appointments and 25 percent for nine-month employees. The University of Michigan and Northwestern University allow colleges and departments to decide overload internally.

UNI United Faculty Complaint