Thursday, June 28, 2012

Giving credit where credit is due on MSSU pay increases

Two weeks ago, Missouri Southern State University Board of Governors Chairwoman Sherry Buchanan praised President Bruce Speck for the "tough decisions": he had made, such as not giving pay raises and eliminating or not filling positions on campus when finances were tight.


In a university news release issued today, she offers a different opinion.



The Board of Governors of Missouri Southern State University met this morning and approved a 3 percent pay raise for employees.

“I am very pleased the Board of Governors approved this pay raise,” said Board Chair Dr. Sherry Buchanan.
“This is a way of thanking MSSU employees for their hard work,” she said. “It is symbolic, in addition to being about dollars and cents, because it shows we value our employees.”

The pay raise will take effect July 1.
  
I guess Bruce Speck did make the tough decision. Apparently, when the employees get a raise, the Board of Governors get the credit and when they don't get a raise, it was Bruce Speck's "tough decision." 
Does anybody in charge over there really have a clue?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

No. No clue at all.

Anonymous said...

They had $1.8 million fall in their laps. What else were they going to do? Seriously. MSSU has already lost many good faculty and staff and this exodus may be stemmed somewhat now. But they didn't want to do it and wouldn't have done it without the windfall which has about $800k left. Let's see where that goes.

Not giving raises and not filling positions isn't "tough decisions", it's the easiest thing to do. It certainly isn't leadership. Collecting masses of ideas from university employees on increasing revenue and reducing costs and saying you're going to prioritize and put numbers to them and then doing NOTHING isn't leadership. There is no leadership or vision in the president or board of MSSU.

If Speck had really wished to set an example and show his dedication to the institution to employees and community, he would have rejected his raise. As far as I know, he's taken the money and run. But I'm sure he'll still expense the car washes on his university-provided vehicle that gets filled with university-provided gas so he can drive to his university-provided housing.

Sinistral said...

For many faculty, this raise will simply re-instate cuts they have taken to their pay over the last few years (cuts that were taken only by faculty). A variety of incentives were eliminated. And, for both faculty and staff, an increase in health insurance expenses were incurred during the years of no raises, so this increase will help offset that, but the raise really returns most to where they were four years ago. It is nice to at least get some of that back, but let's not celebrate some great accomplishment.