BURLINGTON — As contract negotiations get underway between the University of Vermont and the union representing faculty, the union says the school is spending too much on managers and executives and not enough on professors.
The current three-year contract expires June 30.
The University of Vermont chapter of United Academics/AFT cites a study by the American Association of University Professors, a trade group. It found that, compared with similar universities, “UVM spends 3 percent less of its budget on faculty positions needed to carry out the university’s central tasks of research, teaching and mentoring while spending 3 percent more on executive, managerial and other non-teaching positions,” according to a recent news release.
The union says the study was compiled using UVM’s public reports and audited financial statements. Union spokeswoman Julie Roberts, a UVM linguistics professor, said Monday that she could not provide a copy of the report because it contains “confidential and bargaining-related material.”
The union says the study shows a 62 percent decline in new tenure-track positions, thereby jeopardizing UVM’s status as a “flagship public research university,” and that only $1 out of every $3 the university spends on compensation goes to faculty involved in research and instruction.
Roberts declined to comment on the current negotiations, because the ground rules for the negotiations prevent either side from commenting publicly before an impasse is declared.
University spokesman Enrique Corredera provided the following statement: “The university looks forward to a set of productive, good-faith negotiating sessions with United Academics that lead to a new, mutually agreeable contract. Both the university and the union customarily agree not to engage in public discussion on any of the issues that will be appropriately dealt with at the bargaining table, and the university intends to honor that agreement.”
The agreement to refrain from public comment was reached during the first bargaining session Feb. 6, Corredera said. The union’s news release was sent prior to that meeting.
