{"id":763,"date":"2014-01-16T17:46:13","date_gmt":"2014-01-16T15:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=763"},"modified":"2014-01-16T17:46:13","modified_gmt":"2014-01-16T15:46:13","slug":"salaries-once-more-the-acup-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2014\/01\/16\/salaries-once-more-the-acup-report\/","title":{"rendered":"SALARIES ONCE MORE: THE ACUP REPORT <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have already written several entries about the matter of salaries. This one is prompted by a news item published in many media on 13th January regarding a seminar and a report by the ACUP (Associaci\u00f3 Catalana d\u2019Universitats P\u00fabliques). Their web (www.acup.cat<\/a>) has detailed information about the seminar, including an interesting document which compares university teachers\u2019 salaries in a few countries of the world (http:\/\/www.acup.cat\/sites\/default\/files\/ivanpacheco.pdf<\/a>). <\/p>\n

Since this excludes Spain, however, I\u2019m not very sure where the newspapers got the figures they relay. What I heard on TV is that full professors and tenured lecturers (like me) are not doing that badly in comparison to their European colleagues \u2013but that, most importantly, more than 50% of the current teaching staff hold temporary jobs paid between 300 and 1,200 a month (these are post-docs with a research fellowship).<\/p>\n

I borrow from El Peri\u00f3dico<\/em> figures I don\u2019t quite understand, as they refer to the Catalan systems (based on contracts) and not the Spanish civil service. A full professor makes, according to this, 6.559 euros a month (before taxes), a teacher with a permanent contract, or \u2018agregat\u2019, makes 4.615 euros a month, and a teacher with a four-year contract or \u2018lector\u2019 3.350 euros. That was back in 2008, when salaries were frozen and without considering the taxes, which in my own case amount to 32% (last time I checked, plus discounts from Generalitat). 4.615, which is more than I make, minus 30%, equals 3.325 euros. This puzzles me, as I have never earned that much money and I\u2019ve been tenured for 11 years (with all possible complements, etc.). Anyway, the whole point is that while in the upper range, Catalan salaries are similar to those in Europe in the mid range they\u2019re not capable of attracting foreign talent, which the Generalitat is very fond of.<\/p>\n

Let me talk about the low-range salaries. Again. The third time around, I think.<\/p>\n

Students have no idea that more than 50% of the staff teaching them are associates. An associate is supposed to be a professional who devotes a few teaching hours to the university, which is why s\/he draws a very modest salary as it is supposed to complement his\/her main salary. I think we have two that correspond exactly to that profile. <\/p>\n

Things get very complicated, however, when these associates happen to be ambitious about their research \u2013which, anyway, an associate is not expected to carry out at all. Or, if you want to put it the other way round, the university uses shamelessly the figure of the associate to obtain cheap teaching and cheap research from individuals willing to risk it all for their \u2018careers,\u2019 in inverted commas because no matter how real these careers are for the people involved, they do not exist for the university. (I am not giving \u2018university\u2019 a nationality because a friend just told me of a very similar situation in Britain).<\/p>\n

Legally, universities cannot have so many associates. The section I belong to in my Department (Literature and Culture) has currently 11 teachers: 1 full professor, 4 tenured lecturers, 6 associates. The last one to be hired is replacing at 700 euros a month a retired full professor who made (my guess), 4500 net euros a month. I have already explained here that this associate teaches as many hours as the professor used to teach (and that being part time, associates cannot help with admin tasks, a rule we\u2019re about to break). As you can see, the balance is tipped the wrong way already, with a 5\/6 ratio, which should ideally be 8\/3. All full time, for the only real Literature associate should be a writer teaching creative writing.<\/p>\n

The most sinister part of all this is how the system abuses the good will of the grossly underpaid associates. When a university hires you, as I remember very well, you feel flattered: oh, my, I must be good!! This apparent flattery leads, however, to no moral compromise: associates can be dismissed at will and are not offered any tenure tracks. If they stay on, the system implies, this is their free choice. They are, as Dickens would put it, people of \u2018great expectations\u2019 entangled in cases as hopeless as those of the Chancery Court in Bleak House<\/em>. I understand their determination to carry on, because I shared it myself (though with a full time contract) but, surely, there must be a limit and a time to say \u2018enough is enough.\u2019<\/p>\n

So: how can we, privileged seniors, help?<\/p>\n

Comments are very welcome! (Thanks!) Just remember that I check them first for spam; it might take a few days for yours to be available. VISIT MY WEB: http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/<\/a>
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I have already written several entries about the matter of salaries. This one is prompted by a news item published in many media on 13th January regarding a seminar and a report by the ACUP (Associaci\u00f3 Catalana d\u2019Universitats P\u00fabliques). Their web (www.acup.cat) has detailed information about the seminar, including an interesting document which compares university […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching-tools-and-rules"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}