Dear Christine,

      This is in response to your letter dated October 14. The first paragraph of the letter and the January 6, 1997 Guidelines for the Allocation of Part Timers to which it refers are explicit. As written, the Guidelines were clearly intended solely for those part-time faculty who are not teaching in a post-retirement capacity, i.e. for the group which includes most part-time faculty. Evidence for this intention is provided by the following excerpts:

[T]he instructional caliber of our part time faculty must be monitored and evaluated to ensure that we obtain our instructional objectives. ... That some [part-time] faculty are members of the bargaining unit and other (sic) are not presents a problem that we must address. ... Courses classified as A and B level will be taught by full-time faculty members, unless there are extenuating circumstances; in such circumstances a bargaining unit part-time faculty member will be the instructor of choice. Only in the most unusual circumstances, agreed upon by the Dean before offering employment, will non-bargaining unit part-time faculty teach level A or B courses.

      That the Guidelines were intended only for non-retired part-time faculty appears also to be confirmed by the first sentence of the second paragraph of your letter, namely: "My policy viz a viz retired faculty is not written down." (emphasis added) That paragraph speaks of "My policy", "It", and "a policy", in referring to consideration of retired faculty, never of "policies." This apparent clarity of intent is, however, in evident contradiction with your previous letter, of September 24, which says

I have developed a salary structure for compensating part-time faculty based on the size and complexity of the courses that they teach. I also have established a policy of adding a fixed amount to the part-time rate for retired faculty members during their first two retirement years. Therefore, the salary arrived at in your case was based on the combination of these two policies .

      If I grant that you are logically consistent, and that was my reaction when I first read your October 14 letter, then I must conclude, since your "policy viz a viz retired faculty is not written down", that the salary structure based on the size and complexity of the courses taught, cited in your September 24 letter, exists only in your head. My first thought, therefore, was that the Guidelines (and in particular the part on salary structure based on course details) included with your October 14th letter were irrelevant, so far as I was concerned, and I saw no reason why you sent them to me.

      However, I believe that what you probably meant to say was that only part of your overall policy regarding retired faculty is written down, that part which contains the part-time pay scale for different categories of courses. I am by no means certain about this, because the remainder of the second paragraph of your October 14th letter, i.e. the part following the first sentence, is confusing. I will turn to that in a moment. First, however, I must say that if, as your September 24 letter says, "I also have established a policy of adding a fixed amount to the part-time rate for retired faculty members during their first two retirement years", it is totally unsatisfactory to have that "policy" residing only in your head. Whatever it may be, it should be on paper as a university document. Suppose you were to suffer a debilitating stroke. What then would be the status of this unwritten "policy"?

      Your September 24 letter made it sound as though you had established two policies, and as a consequence, "[T]he salary arrived at in your case was based on the combination of these two policies", just as though, with mechanical exactitude, a computer had carried out the precise calculation, thereby arriving at remuneration of $9,999.91 for me to teach the Science for Humane Survival II course this term. I did not find that explanation adequate, which is why I wrote my September 29 note asking for "a copy of each of the two policies." I still want a written statement of your thus-far unwritten policy. You should be willing, even if not anxious, to commit to paper what you claim to have formulated in your mind.

      Now I want to return to the other points in the second paragraph about which I remain confused. The second and third sentences, referring to your policy viz a viz retired faculty, say,

It was developed in response to the University retirement plan of 1994 that precluded post-retirement contracts. At that time, the dean of the Liberal Arts faculty and I developed a policy whereby we would allocate $4,500 for one course each semester for two years provided that course was needed and . . .

         After the confusion generated by that paragraph, your penultimate sentence asserts that the contract you offered me is actually generous as measured by these [more recent] guidelines. And finally, you hope I will understand and accept your reasoning behind the part-time salary issue. I do not know what the "more recent" guidelines are, since your letter did not include that information. However, regardless of those guidelines, I do not consider the offer generous. Rather, I think it is niggardly.

      I believe I understand your reasoning on part-time salaries, and I reject it as an attempt to rationalize (to yourself) the general institutionalization of greed by the administration of UMass/Boston, and your conformity, within your domain (sciences and mathematics) to the campus-wide policy. At the end of the Physics Dept retreat in late August, at which I expressed my skepticism about the value of that supposed departmental evaluation (by two visiting entrepreneurs of so-called "physics teaching research"), you asked me: Don't you think something worthwhile will come out of it? I replied that I was doubtful, and I then asked you: Don't you think it unconscionable that you get over $100,000 a year while part timers have to struggle to make ends meet? You replied that you didn't feel comfortable discussing your salary.

      Whether or not you feel comfortable is hardly a significant consideration in deciding whether or not to pursue the question. It is legitimate to analyze, and not just in generalities, the enormous gap between what administrators like you get paid and what part timers get paid. In fact, my belief is that the reason you feel uncomfortable discussing your salary is that you are basically a decent human being, and you know inwardly, inarticulately, that the salary discrepancy between you and the part-time faculty is really unconscionable. It's plainly and simply wrong -- immoral. But you like the high pay, and you like being an administrator with power, and so you need to rationalize holding on to your priviledges.

      Your rationalization of the niggardly pay that part-time faculty get is invariably the same as that given by all the other highly-paid administrators -- the university is operating with an inadequate budget. If there's no money, what can you do?, we are supposed to think. The reason you feel uncomfortable discussing your pay is because you know it contradicts the rationalization; if there's so much budgeted for you, why is there not some more for the part timers? Let's look at a few numbers. In my case, I was on sabbatical leave the full 1994-95 academic year, during which I received half my normal full-time pay. The administration thus "saved" half my salary, minus whatever amount was allocated to the Physics Dept to pay for some replacement "sections" as you call them, taught by part-time faculty.

      In both the 1995-96 and 1996-97 academic years I taught half-time, at half-pay, by choice. During each of those years the administration "saved" half my salary, minus some part-timer replacement pay. My intention, when I retired last summer, was to teach half-time again this post-retirement year, Science for Humane Survival II this Fall (six contact hours) and Thermodynamics next Spring (three contact hours). As explained in detail in my letter of Sept 22, state law permits me to be paid a total of $18,860.71, and I sought to get two-thirds of that, $12,573.80, for the Fall and one-third, $6,286.90, for the Spring.

      I also pointed out that "at this rate the University saves, compared to my half-time pre-retirement rate, (34,031.56-18,860.71), which equals 15,170.85 ..." Your response of Sept 24 rejected the idea of paying me $12,573.80 for the Science for Humane Survival course, "explaining" why the contract you prepared was for $9,999.91. Because the contract offered me was only for the Fall term, and because I have since decided not to teach Thermodynamics next Spring, let me focus just on the current term. The difference between what I want (and believe I should be paid, accepting for the moment the unjustly restrictive limit imposed by state law) and what your contract offers is $2,573.89.

      How much would the administration "save" this academic year because of my retirement if you agree to pay $12,573.80 for my teaching this Fall? The answer is: my full salary minus the $12,573.80, minus whatever else is allocated to the Physics Dept for part-time teaching in place of the other two-thirds of a full-time schedule (four "sections" in your terminology). This comes to (68,063.11-12,573.80), which equals 55,489.31, minus your part-time allocation to the Physics Dept. Let me call the replacement part-time allocation alpha. The "saving" would then amount to

This however is apparently not enough for you. You are offering me 2,573.89 less, which would increase the "saving" to

The question is, Why? Why is it important to you that the "saving", already quite large, because alpha is a small number, be increased by the relatively small amount of 2,573.89?

      I don't believe you want to "save" this $2,573.89 because it is significant to you, personally. Rather, I think it reflects your internalization of the administration's institutionalized position. In your Sept 24 letter, referring to our discussion last summer, you wrote, "As I indicated when we talked in August, I have developed a salary structure for compensating part-time faculty based on the size and complexity of the courses that they teach." And then, after asserting that the amount offered me "was based on the combination of these two policies, as I made clear to you when we met last August", you went on to say, "You should not have been surprised by the rate of pay indicated on your appointment forms." You mistakenly assumed I was surprised. Your offer simply confirmed my views of the institutionalized cupidity of the administration, as expressed in my articles on greed (Greed 101,102,103, and 104). I would have been surprised, indeed even shocked, if you had acted in a way that did not conform to the administration's position. Rather than surprise, my reaction was one of anger at a system that is rotten to the core. This system did not, and it does not deserve your continued support.

      You arranged to have Celia Moore present at our meeting in August. She supported the position that as a retiree my pay should be lower than it had previously been for the same work because I would be receiving a retirement pension. At that time I countered her assertion by pointing out that the pension represented money which I had previously earned and which the state forcefully withheld from my paychecks throughout all my years at UMass. I also said, accurately, that I could not begin to get that forced savings back without formally retiring. What I failed to say at that time is that the logic of Celia's argument is closely parallel to the old argument used to justify paying lower wages to women, in particular married women, on the grounds that they had other sources of support. A pretty shabby argument, wouldn't you agree?

      Finally, why am I contesting this $2,573.89? Is it an indication that I too am greedy, despite my having said to you that the money itself was not important to me? Although that particular money is not important to me, money and the value that is placed upon it is a major concern of mine. How to deal, on a personal level, with money has been a longstanding problem for me. Last winter the group Resist asked me to write a little essay about why I have supported them for nearly thirty years. They printed my essay, and I have made it into a course handout, a copy of which is enclosed. In that brief note, I tried to explain my views about money and related issues.

      Besides my essay for Resist, which I really hope you will read, I am also enclosing a copy of the list of contributions I made last year and this year, up to now. I intend this year to increase the total from last year's $20,000 to roughly $25,000, because my income has gone up. I am not contesting you for that $2,573.89 for personal enrichment. The reason I am doing it is because I want to contribute to changing an unfair system that is hurting part-time faculty, unnecessarily. There is more than enough pain and suffering in the natural lives of people without those in power increasing the burden. I hope you will admit it, and do the right thing.