March 2007 Newsletter
Priscilla Thain, Newsletter Editor

PROFS' Lobbying on Compensation and Domestic Partner Benefits

In January, PROFS President Louise Robbins (Library and Information Studies), Robert Mathieu (Astronomy), William Tracy (Agronomy) and Jack O'Meara, PROFS lobbyist, met with Karen Timberlake, Director of the Office of State Employment Relations (OSER). They discussed the distribution of the $5 million Recruitment and Retention fund in the previous biennium.

UW-Madison received 29% of that money and PROFS felt that UW-Madison should receive a much higher portion of the money as UW-Madison has serious retention and recruitment issues. (UW-Madison has 29% of the total UW-System faculty, but 45% of the UW System compensation budget.) The OSER people indicated they too were not happy with the distribution of the $5 million in 2005-07, because a portion was distributed across the board at other UW System schools. They indicated that UW-Madison was intended to be the recipient of most of that fund.

As a result, the Governor doubled the $5 million Recruitment and Retention money to $10 million in the new budget and included a requirement that the Regents submit a plan to the Department of Administration on the distribution of the money. PROFS had also discussed the distribution issue in individual meetings with Regents.

In December, Professor Louise Robbins testified before the Board of Regents on the urgent need for competitive faculty compensation and domestic partner benefits. Also in December, PROFS distributed the December Faculty Senate resolution on domestic partner benefits to the Governor and key legislators. When the Governor introduced his budget, PROFS issued a press release applauding the Governor for including this provision.

In the push for domestic partner benefits, PROFS, under the direction of President Louise Robbins, has matched lists of the Wisconsin companies with key legislators in those districts. Robert Mathieu, Chair of the University Committee, recently distributed these lists to the faculty representatives from the other UW universities and colleges, asking them to contact the legislators and business leaders in their districts.

Domestic partner benefits are becoming more commonplace in Wisconsin and across the nation, and the companies are reporting that domestic partner insurance increases health insurance costs by no more than 1%. The city of Minneapolis and a number of cities in California now require companies that do business with those cities to offer domestic partner benefits to their employees. The City of Madison offers domestic partner benefits to its employees and in December, the Attorney General issued an opinion to the City of Madison, in response to a request, that the recently adopted constitutional amendment on the Definition of Marriage does not restrict the ability of governmental bodies to provide domestic partner benefits to its employees.

Domestic partner health insurance is offered at all of the Big Ten schools except UW-Madison. However, a Michigan lower court recently ruled that the University of Michigan, Michigan State and other state universities would have to stop offering domestic partner benefits because of a recent constitutional amendment. The case will likely be appealed in the Michigan Supreme Court.

PROFS is focusing the lobbying effort on the special faculty Recruitment and Retention fund, as faculty salaries are determined to be over 8% below the median of the peer group, and domestic partner benefits.

Collective Bargaining
PROFS is closely reviewing the provisions in the budget relating to collective bargaining. The language does not appear to address all the parameters specified in the Faculty Senate resolution of May 2005 for consideration by the faculty.

Next article»