Advice on expectations around inflation-adjusted salaries?

[inflationista]

Hi, any advice about how to form expectations around how salaries should be adjusted due to the US's recent very high rates of inflation?

If inflation has been 6-7% the past couple years, should we be negotiating for inflation-adjusted higher salaries at the job offer stage?

Also, for folks in R2s with faculty unions, what are the chances that your salary will in the future get inflation adjustments in addition to seniority raises?

[Not so much]

Neither student tuition nor university budgets rise in real time with accordance to inflation. Given the concurrent enrollment contraction, there’s pressure to cut rather than to expand faculty and staff lines, as most other costs are fixed. Union contracts are usually negotiated for multi-year periods, so there’s always a lag between inflationary periods and salary increases.

[Not so much]

It is easier for a continuing employee (or a union) to use inflation as a justification for higher salaries — costs have risen while income has not. New (prospective) hires are in a tougher spot, as they have to argue that this year’s set of offers should be higher than in previous years without knowing what those earlier offers looked like. And the administration can counter (probably falsely) that they already took inflation into account when calculating the current offer.

[disappointing]

Thanks. That's discouraging news. One factor is that I'm focused on a public university where prior salaries are public info. But it sounds like individuals are left to the wolves to try (usually in vain) to make inflation part of their salary negotiations... For a field about social dynamics, we end up with a lot of individualist processes.

It's a shame that the unions don't include annual inflation adjustments in the contracts, for situations like the past couple years with back to back 7% inflation. That means the real salaries decreased by 7%, then by another 7%...

[share your salaries]

This is a strong argument for departments sharing salary info with new hires and helping them in negotiations.

[Adding]

FWIW, as a new hire, I tried negotiating a higher salary and specifically cited high rates of inflation. I was unsuccessful. They were not able to raise my salary at all.

[negotiating]

Negotiating an initial offer isn't about costs or inflation. it's about whether you have competing offers and whether they have other candidates they will consider if you say no. even when you do have competing offers, base salary is usually not going to move much. movement during negotiations is usually on more discretionary funds (summer money, startup costs, etc.)

[depends]

In my cash-strapped public R1, base salary can still move a LOT with an outside offer. But without that, it's what the person above me said: the temporary stuff.

[Sure]

Apr 18, 2023 14:35:02 GMT -5 negotiating said:

Negotiating an initial offer isn't about costs or inflation. it's about whether you have competing offers and whether they have other candidates they will consider if you say no. even when you do have competing offers, base salary is usually not going to move much. movement during negotiations is usually on more discretionary funds (summer money, startup costs, etc.)

I had another offer, and the department even moved up their faculty meeting to vote early because I was their top candidate. Still no change in base offer.

[Not so much]

Three more comments about union shops. First, collective bargaining agreements go well beyond salaries. They usually try to influence workplace environments, including tenure and promotion expectations; chains of command; workload expectations. They include benefits other than base salary such as health and retirement benefits. These can be vital quality of work life issues.

Second, while built-in COLA raises would be great, they come with a cost. University budgets and union contracts have a lot of interconnected and moving parts. Negotiating an automatic COLA increase would require giving up something else. This is especially true for state institutions that rely on legislative allocations determined years in advance. If the COLA increase is not built into the funding stream, there will be many unintended consequences.

Finally, the union’s role in a prospective faculty member’s individual contract usually starts during the hiring process. Every candidate should reach out to the union reps before signing anything to ask about negotiating strategies to find out what is a reasonable (or the most productive) way to get a better offer.

[sad]

You will be paid poorly as a professor in sociology unless you work at a very wealthy university. That is the sad reality.

[inflationista]

Apr 18, 2023 23:12:38 GMT -5 Not so much said:

Three more comments about union shops. First, collective bargaining agreements go well beyond salaries. They usually try to influence workplace environments, including tenure and promotion expectations; chains of command; workload expectations. They include benefits other than base salary such as health and retirement benefits. These can be vital quality of work life issues.

Second, while built-in COLA raises would be great, they come with a cost. University budgets and union contracts have a lot of interconnected and moving parts. Negotiating an automatic COLA increase would require giving up something else. This is especially true for state institutions that rely on legislative allocations determined years in advance. If the COLA increase is not built into the funding stream, there will be many unintended consequences.

Finally, the union’s role in a prospective faculty member’s individual contract usually starts during the hiring process. Every candidate should reach out to the union reps before signing anything to ask about negotiating strategies to find out what is a reasonable (or the most productive) way to get a better offer.

• COLA raises come with a cost, but that cost is justifiable. Strictly speaking, everything has a cost. The question is whether those costs are worth the benefits. What could be more important than keeping salaries at least constant, rather than depreciating due to runaway inflation like we've seen the last 3 years?
  
  If there aren't COLA raises, then the real salaries are DECLINING, substantially.
  
  What are the "unintended consequences" that would be worse than reducing salaries by failing to adjust them to match inflation?
  
  
• Also, I'm not sure about the advice to reach out to union reps during individual contract negotiations. I know that I was able to get a much higher salary than someone else hired at the same time as I was, because I had a competing offer and negotiated assertively (it helped that I was VERY willing to take the other offer, and only slightly preferred the department I ended up at -- both are great places). I think a union might frown on that practice because their goal is for everyone at the same level to get the same salaries.
  

[inflationista]

Apr 18, 2023 14:35:02 GMT -5 negotiating said:

Negotiating an initial offer isn't about costs or inflation. it's about whether you have competing offers and whether they have other candidates they will consider if you say no. even when you do have competing offers, base salary is usually not going to move much. movement during negotiations is usually on more discretionary funds (summer money, startup costs, etc.)

This is pragmatic advice. Negotiating should include inflation concerns, but in practice that will unfortunately not work in most places. You have to find a different negotiating strategy that will actually work at that place, even if your actual motivation is concern about inflation.

That is very dysfunctional and anti-worker and should not be how it is, but it seems like that is how it is because even the unions seem to have given up on the idea of built-in cost of living adjustments.

[negotiating2]

Apr 19, 2023 11:15:09 GMT -5 inflationista said:

Apr 18, 2023 14:35:02 GMT -5 negotiating said:

Negotiating an initial offer isn't about costs or inflation. it's about whether you have competing offers and whether they have other candidates they will consider if you say no. even when you do have competing offers, base salary is usually not going to move much. movement during negotiations is usually on more discretionary funds (summer money, startup costs, etc.)

This is pragmatic advice. Negotiating should include inflation concerns, but in practice that will unfortunately not work in most places. You have to find a different negotiating strategy that will actually work at that place, even if your actual motivation is concern about inflation.

That is very dysfunctional and anti-worker and should not be how it is, but it seems like that is how it is because even the unions seem to have given up on the idea of built-in cost of living adjustments.

And ironically, the unions place limits on how much you can negotiate as an incoming faculty and therefore affect overall salaries among faculty. Faculty unions are trying to minimize differences between faculty, which is a laudable goal. But it also puts a cap on how much you can negotiate with a competing offer because the union won't allow you to make too much more than your colleagues. 

[100k or bust]

Apr 19, 2023 8:33:25 GMT -5 sad said:

You will be paid poorly as a professor in sociology unless you work at a very wealthy university. That is the sad reality.

Most sociology faculty I know (not at very wealthy universities mostly) get to 100k within a few years. Some overachievers get quite a bit higher by getting external grants or things like that. Yes those at wealthy unis start and end much higher.

I guess 'paid poorly' is relative, but I personally wouldn't consider 100k being paid poorly even in a big city. But yes I would like it to be higher and think there should be cost of living adjustments.

I think the unions overall help faculty a LOT -- having previously worked in a school without a union, the situation there was much, much worse -- but in this instance of negotiating starting salaries I would maybe advise someone to go rogue so they can maximize their starting salary.