UH faculty contract includes 4 annual pay hikes

The University of Hawaii’s nearly 4,000 faculty members would receive annual pay increases of at least 2 percent over the next four years under a tentative deal reached with the state.

The proposed contract covering members of the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly calls for across-the-board raises and supplemental payments in the first two years of the contract, which would take effect July 1.

Faculty would see a $500 boost in each of the first two years, to be paid out over 24 installments and added into their base pay. They also would receive a 2.13 percent raise in the first year of the contract, followed by a 2.82 percent raise the next year.

UHPA Executive Director Kristeen Hanselman said Tuesday that unlike lump-sum bonuses, the negotiated supplemental payments would increase base pay.

“They are a cash payment to be added to the base pay. They count toward retirement. They are not a bonus,” she said.

The final two years of the contract include 2 percent annual raises.

University faculty across the 10-campus system are completing a two-year labor contract that included 4 percent annual raises. Before that, faculty saw annual 3 percent raises in 2013 and 2014, and a 4 percent raise in 2015.

A full professor at the flagship Manoa campus earns an average $142,731 salary, according to UHPA data. Professors at the medical and law schools earn more. At the community colleges, professors earn $98,808 on average.

Hanselman said the overall salary increases were designed to help offset rising health costs for members.

“The contract reflects the union’s desire to ensure that no faculty members were negatively impacted by a rather significant increase in health insurance premiums paid by the employee,” she said in a phone interview. “It took a great deal of work to come up with a distribution model of funds that would ensure that there was at least something left over for faculty members who found themselves facing a significant increase in premium costs.”

She said the faculty union negotiated a so-called “reopener clause” in each of the last two years of the contract to negotiate additional benefits, including higher pay.

“We do not know what is going to happen with some of the other contracts within years 3 and 4, and what we are looking at is a minimum of at least 1.2 percent,” Hanselman said.

Beyond pay, the contract also proposes to strengthen the faculty tenure and promotion process; make items in hire letters subject to the union’s grievance and arbitration procedures; and retain protections for intellectual property such as research and inventions.

UHPA’s board of directors has recommended the proposal for ratification, and electronic voting is underway through June 19. Electronic ballots were sent out Thursday, according to the union.

A university spokesman said the university could not comment while ratification is pending.

The deal contrasts with what state negotiators had proposed in earlier rounds of contract talks with public- sector unions.

Before the legislative session began in January, Gov. David Ige’s administration had been warning of a dire fiscal landscape as it began labor negotiations with 14 units of the state’s public worker unions.

The state had initially proposed that at least two public worker unions — including UHPA — accept no raises for the next two years. It later floated proposals of 1 percent lump-sum bonuses for state workers, before negotiating various raises with the different unions.

“The tone that the state set was a negative tone, and did not appear supportive of faculty members,” Hanselman said of the early talks. “It is of concern, and it will be a continuing concern of UHPA.”

A spokeswoman for the governor said Ige was traveling Tuesday and unavailable for comment.

A cost estimate was not immediately available. The current two-year contract with 4 percent annual raises was estimated to cost $32 million when it was approved.