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- March 25, 2020 | Employees to Share 1% Merit-Increase Pool...
- Title:
- March 25, 2020 | Employees to Share 1% Merit-Increase Pool
- Date:
- 2020-03-25
- Category:
- Presidential Memos
- Harvested from:
- https://www.uidaho.edu/president/communications/presidential-memos
- Type:
- text
- Digital Format:
- text/html
- Reference Link:
- https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/fridayletter/letters/president_memo_2020-03-25_2.html
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March 25, 2020 | Employees to Share 1% Merit-Increase Pool
TO: University of Idaho Faculty and Staff
FROM: Scott Green, President
DATE: March 25, 2020
SUBJECT: Employees to Share 1% Merit-Increase Pool
You, our faculty and staff, are the University of Idaho’s greatest assets. The events of the past few weeks have underscored this fact. The service you provide our students impacts lives for the better, fulfills our mission and keeps our institution running smoothly. We have worked hard for the past several years to bring salaries in line with our peers and to ensure you are properly compensated for your work here.
The Idaho Legislature is responsible for the distribution of public funds, which are a key driver in increases in base pay. Increases implemented by the state are known as Change in Employee Compensation (CEC).
The CEC increases have been finalized. Gov. Brad Little proposed, and the Legislature supported, a 2% increase in compensation for FY21. Salaries at Idaho’s public colleges and universities are funded from several different sources including general education (tuition and fees, state appropriations and land-grant endowments), local funds, auxiliaries, grants and contracts, etc. The legislative appropriation will provide approximately 54% of the funding needed to support a full 2% salary increase pool for employees paid from the General Education Fund (the Legislature provides none of the funding for salary increases for employees paid from other funding sources). In the past, we have increased tuition to partially cover the shortfall. However, Idaho’s four-year college and university presidents agreed to freeze undergraduate tuition for the coming year. We believe this is the right decision and will help more Idaho students go on to higher education.
While in many ways the tuition freeze is a good thing, it means our already-limited resources will be stretched even further, and we will be unable to fund salary adjustments to the same level as other state agencies, or to the degree recommended by the governor. All eight public colleges and universities have agreed on an approximately 1% merit-based salary pool increase, across all employee groups, regardless of salary funding source. This agreement is an effort to be equitable across Idaho higher education employees. We will, as in the past, develop and deploy a compensation plan to determine how the salary pool will be distributed across all qualified U of I employees. It is also our intention to fund faculty promotions out of this same pool.
Thank you for your dedication and commitment. You do a tremendous job meeting the needs of our students and campus communities despite limited resources and challenging budget decisions. We have shown in the past few weeks how Vandals continue to be brave and bold in our approach to providing a great experience for our students and for being a great place to work.
Scott Green
President