Cc: Members of the Budget Committee
Members of the welfare Committee
Jay Marshall, Dean, ESR
Mark Myers, Chair, Earlham Board of Trustees
From: Doug Bennett
Date: February, 22 2000
Re: Earlham College Fair Wage Report
I appreciate receiving a copy of your "Earlham College Fair Wage Report." You raise issues that are large and difficult, and challenge us to embrace new priorities.
As you note, we are currently experiencing a significant budget deficit. We have developed a plan to bring us back to fiscal equilibrium. Developing and approving that plan is a project on which we have spent much of the last two years. In working our way to fiscal equilibrium, we want to use our resources in a manner that best accords with our mission. And we have also made the commitment that fiscal equilibrium involves not just balanced budgets but also meeting our approved compensation norms for faculty and staff. Your proposal would both add significantly to the college's budget and also have us revise our compensation norms.
Is the direction you urge the right one for Earlham? Answering this will require some careful, critical and caring consideration involving a number of people. My first responsibility in this or any similar matter is to see that we embark on this consideration in the right way, a way that engages our appropriate governance processes.
The issues you raises fall within the purview of two Earlham College committees, the Budget Committee and the Welfare Committee. Budget Committee includes faculty, staff, and students; Welfare Committee includes faculty and staff. Dick Smith is the officer who works most closely with both committees. Both committees made recommendations to me as President. If I accept these recommendations, I take them to the Board of Trustees for final consideration and approval.
The Budget Committee makes recommendations each fiscal year about student charges, faculty and staff compensation, and the overall composition of the annual budget. It also makes recommendations helping us set budget priorities with regard to new initiatives affecting the budget. The Welfare Committee makes recommendations each fiscal year about the composition of our benefits package, about the distribution of raises within the overall salary pool, and about other matters affecting the welfare of faculty and staff.
By a copy of this memo I will ask the Budget Committee to give me advice regarding the overall cost of your proposal, and about where we should see this proposal as a priority among other competing claims on the budget.
In addition, I will ask the Welfare Committee to give me advice about whether we should change our compensation norms for staff and about whether we should change our approach to making annual adjustments in wages and salary (what weight should we give to cost-of-living adjustments, to merit, and to length of service). As I think you know, our current compensation norm for staff is to have our starting wages for various positions be at the median the starting rate of other large not-for-profit organizations in our immediate geographical vicinity.
In
need to mention one further matter. We try to keep our compensation and
other human resources relatively common between the College and ESR. The
Budget and Welfare Committees are committees of the COllege. I also need
to involve ESR in this consideration as well. EST has its own governance
processes. Therefore, I am also sending this memo and the materials you
have sent me to Jay Marshall, Dean of ESR. I ask that he confer with others
in ESR as appropriate and give me advice as well on these matters.