Welcome to week 3

Today I learned that the admin, in its attempt to sway public opinion, is cooking up numbers. Well, we already knew that, but now we know how, at last in one case. And it's almost sensible. But it isn't the way 'most people' think of numbers (for the record, I'm not sure the way 'we' do it is any more 'correct', but at least our way is more in line with 'most people'.

So let's say that admin's offer is 1% in each year of 3 years. To 'most people', that's a 1% raise, followedy a 1% raise, followe by a 1% raise, such that at the end, you're making approximately 3% more than you were making before. In fact you're making a little more, since those %s compound.

What 'most people' would not interpret that as is a 6% raise. Which it is not, in any sense. Except that admin's position is that by offering 1% in each of 3 years, they have to come up with 1% more money in the first year, and 2% more money (than now) in the second, and 3% more in the third year. Which adds up to 6%, which is how much more money they have to pump into salaries, but it's hot how much more money is going into paychecks.

Add to this the previously known case of including in your calculations increases that have already been bargained and they are beholden to.

So that's that. Draw your own conclusions.

If last week was targeting politicians, this week is supposed to be about targeting the administration. Frankly it's more fun sending emails to politicians, since we don't have to work with these people (directly) after the strike. But I'm thinking of things I can usually say to the president of the university. Perhaps I'll have another open letter to share in the next couple days.

BTW, the 2016 strike, for 21 days, was apparently the longest strike at the University of Manitoba in history. We're told (because there was a press release about it) that admin has presented a 'new' offer to the mediator today. We, the rank and file, know nothing about this offer yet. The Bargaining Committee and the Collective Agreement Committee are going over it, seeing what is really in it (as opposed to what was in the press release, which we know isn't how 'most people' are going to interpret it), before they officially comment. Which means I won't comment either. Except that the last couple offers weren't substantially different, in terms of better recruitment and retention of new faculty, than previous offers. They seem to involve moving money around, rather than coming up with new money. For instance, you can offer 1% in each of three years, or you can offer 1.5% in the first year, and 1% in the second year, and 0.5% in the third. From their perspective, that's the same 6% they have to outlay, except they have to come up with a little less year after year.

Full disclosure: the actual offers look nothing like the above. The above is just how I understood what was told to the mediator when they asked what the difference was between admin's numbers and our numbers. Or rather what was told to my cluster leader about what was told to the mediator.

But just to remind people, the current inflation rate is on the order of 4.4%, so even an offer of 2% in any year doesn't keep up with inflation, and actually falls further behind than the 1.5% offer back when inflation was about 2.3%. And this is just about the 50th contract year that hasn't kept up with inflation. Been reading about how young people don't have to go into debt to go to school, they just have to work. But school costs more, even adjusting for inflation, and employers pay less, than they did 40-50 years ago.