Striking U of L faculty need to get back to work
By Lethbridge Herald on March 10, 2022.
Doug Manderville’s March 4th letter “U of L students deserve to be educated for the tuition they have paid” was an awfully painful letter to read. My response is directed at picketing ULFA members feeling “overworked and underpaid”
If you really have the best interests of students” at heart, why didn’t you all plan your tantrum when the campus was shut due to COVID, or during the months of July and August after graduation and your obligation as educators to educate students had been fulfilled?
I’ll tell you why. Your BMW’s and Range Rovers needed a good run to the lake where the fun, frolic, boat and cabin await.
I did some simple math, based on one of you drawing a salary of $175,000 annual (low) courtesy me and every other taxpayer.
As anyone looking in on thesalary disclosure document knows, very few of you are in the under $200,000 salary range. I’m being generous.
Regardless, $175,000 over 12 months gets you a monthly pay cheque of $14,583.00. Daily, based on a 30 day month, you rake in $486 – daily!
Calculated, on a five day working week, you’re being paid $60.75 hourly. I’m asking my fellow taxpayers – who made/makes that kind of money, then complained/complains about being overworked, and underpaid?
I pity you all, I sympathize with not one of you. I save my sympathies for hard-working people scraping together a life, some pouring their hearts into three jobs at minimum wage, making nothing in the range of $60.75 and more, an hour. Some of you make well over $100 an hour. How disgusting is that?
Do you have egos that big you think you earn it or you’re worth that largess?
Need I remind anyone, not yet connecting with the waste, greed and ugliness, there’s librarians at Uof L making near and over $300,000 annual. My Friends at Chinook Arch, how do you feel about that?
Score ULFA #1, Students #2.
ULFA, get back to work and realize the damage your greed is causing this community, and the future of students you deny advanced education too.
A.W. Shier
Lethbridge
15-14
Poor AW made the mistake of thinking the Sunshine list is a full disclosure of salaries. “Very few of you are in the below $200,000 salary range.” Almost no faculty are at the top end of that sunshine list, those spots are reserved for administrators and former administrators. That salary disclosure list is only of the highest paid people at the university. Here is the full disclosure of all salaries earned by U of L academic staff (ULFA members): (from https://www.ulfa.ca/bargaining_updates/issues-on-the-table-reciprocal-sunshine-list/
There are a number of issues with this:
The sunshine list only shows people above a certain range (about $135k) and very few faculty members are actually on that list compared to the overall number
Many of the ones above $150k are either current admins or admins in the past.
The list does not show differences in the fields. Some fields like management or statistics have strong industry demands and even our “high” salary is significantly lower than industry average. In fact low salary is the main reason why there has been a lot of unsuccessful hiring attempts in some fields over the past 10 years.
In my field, the U of L was maybe $10-20k behind 20 years ago compared to other universities, and probably $30-40k behind now. Private industries will easily double that.
Why is that anyone who makes more money than these fools is their enemy. While these phony conservatives, Reformers, help their rich friends screw us out of our oil and tax wealth it’s okay to financially destroy our health care and education systems. You didn’t see Lougheed doing this. Wake up people you are being treated like morons and letting Kenney do it. That $9.4 billion he cut off your corporate taxes would have gone a long way to provide proper funding for our health care and education systems and we certainly don’t need a lot more privatization of health care like he is promising.
After taking the caps off our power bills , to let the rich gouge you, do you really think his little token of $50. per month for three months is really going to help seniors paying as much as $500. per month, like we are seeing ?
This letter is a solid example of why we need to protect and sustain our education system in Alberta; i.e. what ULFA are trying to do. This angry rant has been justified with completely false numbers that an educated individual would question or quickly work out are grossly exaggerated after doing a little home work. Alternatively, the author knows the narrative and statistics are false but is being purposefully dishonest to justify an idealistically-based opinion.
Maybe A&W Shier should themselves invest in post-secondary education and learn how to do research and make evidence based informed decisions before deciding to voice their opinion on ANYTHING.