35% of all stats are made up on the spot...

To his credit, Carson Jerema quickly replied to my last post on Macleans magazine.

Jerema took issue with the fact that I had called attention to the numbers (they looked wrong) he reported over the FAUST-STU admin contract proposals regarding salary increase. Jerema reported in his story, that professors had asked for 30% in salary increases for the life of the contract, and the administration offered 20%. Jerema informed me in the comments section that he got his numbers from the benoit report. However, upon reading the report I was perplexed as these figures do not actually appear in the report. What does appear in the report is a tabulation of administration's proposed salary increases and the professor's salary increases.

The professor's numbers are directly compared to what the administration offered over a three year period.

The confusing part is that four pay scales are listed for Assistant, Associate, Full Tenure, and tenure at highest pay.

What Jerema did was calculate the average percentage of increases per year for each of the four different payscales. He then took each payscale's average increase and added the percentages together for each of the three contract years. That gives you a much larger number something like 20-30% in yearly increases. Then he added each of the yearly totals (3 years) and averaged them out, getting the 20% admin. and 30% professor's numbers. It makes no sense to add three different payscales together. What he should have done was average out the four payscales, add them, up for admin and professors, and you would get the average yearly increase for each side. The article is worded in such a way that one could, if they were really knowledgeable of the negotiations, know exactly what figure Jerema was presenting (e.g. "salary increases closer to 30 per cent for the same pay scales over the same period") However, at the very least it's a sneaky and confusing way of presenting the proposed salary increases. No other news stories that I've seen (other than quotes from the administration) represents the proposed salary increases this way. It serves to portray the professor's demands as unreasonable (building a classic straw-man argument) which bolsters Jerema's over-reaching thesis, turning rationale and reason on its head. That's the Maclean's spin for you, and the type of muck-raking tabloid "journalism" that this magazine engages in.

If Jerema had been fair, he would have presented the following numbers from the Benoit Report:

Stu Administration: --total average salary increase = 5.3% --total after inflation (3.1%) = 2.2%


Professors : --total average salary increase = 7.2% --total after inflation (3.1%) = 4.1%

So really, to be fair, after talks broke down the professors were looking for a total raise after three years averaging 4.1% after inflation. What they got after binding arbitration was something like 2-3%, just barely the rate of inflation. It's sad really. And with this in mind, it's a disgrace that the STU SU took sides against professors. The STU SU did untold and long-term damage to their own school.