As this is my last report of the year, I would like to exercise my privilege in taking the bully pulpit. The Living Wage Resolution we passed in March 2001 raised a set of concerns that continues to haunt this institution. Many of would agree that no full-time employee of the university should make a salary that is so low that it qualifies her for public assistance. Unfortunately, this is a reality for hundreds of UT employees. One approach to addressing this would be to implement an equal dollar amount cost of living raise until all low-wage UT employees achieve a living wage. In 2001, in an email response to such a proposal, one Senator quoted an old Armenian/Turkish proverb which states: "Every finger on a hand is not the same size (for a reason)" and advocated that we keep distributing cost of living raises as percentage of base salaries. For me, "across the board" pay increases such as this are inherently flawed. Consider that a 1% raise for an employee making $100,000 results in an additional $1,000. In contrast, a secretary making $15,000 receives a raise of only $150.

To visualize this problem I have made two hands, one of which shows the normal human hand, and the second which shows the hand of UT.

Original image found here.
On the normal hand we can see that all digits are of different sizes reasons that make sense. On the hand of UT, we see that there are highly disproportionate differences between (1) a groundskeeper, (2) a secretary, (3) a system administrator, (4) a faculty member, and (5) a UT police officer.

Decades of distributing salary increases using "across the board raises" has resulted in gross income disparities. Ray Hamilton, Executive Director of Budget and Finance estimated in 2001 that if a 2.5% equal raise proposal were implemented each employee at UT would receive $810. I realize that the State Legislature dictates how raises are distributed, but until all full-time employees at UT are making a "living wage", UT should consider an equal dollar amount raise when implementing future cost of living raises. After all, loaf of bread and a gallon of gasoline costs the same for each employee. Despite this one shortcoming on our Senate Scorecard, I appreciate the good work so many of you have done this year. Our accomplishments built on the work of the Faculty Senates that came before us. Likewise, I hope our efforts this year will help to advance the university and the cause of shared governance in the future.

The full address and other speeched can be found here.