Finally: A Raise

I just got a raise.

It’s a long story, though.

Every three years, I come up for review. As a union member, if I’m rehired, I get a 6% raise every three years–this is dependent on my being “excellent.”

In Fall 2015, I put together a review packet and asked for a merit raise of 3% in addition to the regular one. Why? Well, research faculty get raises for publications, for editing journals, for presentations, etc. I am the author of several books and articles. I edit a peer-reviewed journal. Etc. All but one of the tenured faculty in my department supported that request, which was then forwarded to the decision makers.

In Spring of 2016, I was nominated for and received a teaching award.

A few weeks later, UC Davis told me that I could not get a merit award–that it was great that I do all this research and publishing, but that I can’t ever get a raise for it, since I’m teaching faculty instead of research faculty. (Research faculty (aka tenure track), by the way, are the ones who get to vote on things like my raises.) In other words, they said since publishing wasn’t part of my job–something I’m already paid to do–I can’t get a raise for it, like they can. (I don’t think they understand what raises are for.)

They said that the only way I could get a raise was to win a teaching award or to publish a textbook. They mentioned that since my teaching was amazing, I would likely get a teaching award soon.

I appealed, noting that in between asking and being denied, I had in fact won that award. I also noted that since they could tell I deserved one, I should have gotten a raise anyway–they were looking at the same materials the award committee was, after all.

And you can only win that award once. And only two are granted a year, so that means a bunch of amazing teachers won’t ever get the raises they deserve.

In my appeal, I also made the argument that if the only part of my job that counted was my teaching, I should get a raise for serving on a dissertation committee and for teaching independent study classes. Both are teaching. Both are unpaid labor. In fact, when I teach independent studies, the university gets paid by the student, but I don’t get paid at all.

I swayed half of the committee to reevaluate. The dean broke the tie, denying the merit raise.

Three more years have come and gone. In that time, I have done even more professional development, I have attended more conferences, given more interviews, published more articles and books, taught more “free” classes, done more admin work (paid and unpaid), etc.

And one of those publications was the textbook I authored with Melissa.

Within the last three years, someone who won the teaching award after me has gotten her raise.

Melissa has gotten a raise for our book.

So this fall, when I turned in my packet, I argued that I should get the union 6%, 3% for the 2015 teaching award, and 3% for the textbook.

About half of the tenured faculty in my department agreed. The other half said I should just get 3% (like Melissa did, which would have negated my teaching award entirely).

One faculty member, the one who said I didn’t deserve merit last time, wrote a red herring argument about how she hated one small piece of my admin work, which went into the file.

So I was worried.

Today, however, I learned that I got my 12%. By one vote.