Letters

CUFA corrects Gazette error

 

The following letter was sent to The Gazette on Sept. 19, but so far has not been published. The author would like to share its contents with the Concordia community.

I am afraid that Peggy Curran has misunderstood the market supplement, an element of the salary arrangements negotiated between the Concordia University Faculty Association (CUFA) and Concordia University (“Business school gets lesson in real-life belt-tightening,” Sept. 14).

Contrary to what she writes, the market supplements at the John Molson School of Business are not “designed to make up the difference between the typical professor’s salary and the wages he or she could earn in the corporate world.” Nor do they have anything to do with some administrator’s generosity.

This system of market supplements across the university exists because academic salaries in some disciplines are demonstrably higher than in others. The standard of comparison is the Canadian academic market where salaries are far below those of the corporate world.

I should also point out that the market supplement declines over time. Short of other adjustments, faculty members who enjoy them at the outset would end up earning the same as any other faculty member at the end of their careers.

I should add that market supplements are a new feature of the Concordia salary system and those whose careers started before the mid-1990s do not have them.

In the John Molson School of Business, only a few faculty members who have been here for many years are paid much more than new hires and some are paid less.

These differences cannot always be rationalized. Of course, correcting these salary inversions would cost more money.

Charles Draimin,
Treasurer, Concordia University
Faculty Association