University Administrative Salaries Out In The Open
Student leaders say admin is paid too much
JENELLE PETRINCHUK STAFF
Administrative staff salaries have been criticized for being too high in articles published by a group of U of M student leaders and a Winnipeg Sun commentator in recent weeks.
“Universities have their priorities all wrong” read the headline in the Winnipeg Free Press article co-written by UMSU president Garry Sran, Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) president Megan Gallant, and Dorothy Wigmore, president of the CUPE 3909, the union representing sessional instructors and TAs.
The premise of the article was that university administrators are paid excessive sums of money while the university keeps claiming that it is short on funds.
Every year the university publishes a public disclosure report, as the U of M is a public institution and is required to print the salaries of all staff with incomes over $100,000 annually.
“It was brought to the attention of the UMSU campaigns and government relations committee where we talked about comparing some of the administrators’ salaries and what-not, and noticing these increases in the compensation packages,” said Sran, “When this information was related to the committee, we decided to make [it] public.”
The article, published August 13, stated:
“While [U of M’s president Emöke] Szathmáry’s $320,000 salary puts her in the rarified heights of the 0.26 per cent of Manitobans who earn more than $250,000 a year . . . vice-president Deborah McCallum’s $43,000 increase — at 23 per cent the highest percentage increase [in the past two years] — brings her compensation to $192,000 annually.”
Sran seemed distraught that there were such large increases in salaries while students are being forced to pay more ancillary fees.
“. . .in May 2006 [Szathmáry commented] that the university might close its doors for good if students’ mandatory user fees were not increased,” the article stated. “But at the same time, what we are seeing are funds that are going away from core education and being put into things like administrators’ salaries and public relations,” added Sran.
Sran stated that he is not implying that things such as administrative workers are not important — but “we need to start looking at our priorities and start going back to what the university is about, which is educating our students and doing research and making sure that resources are there for the university to do what it needs to do.”
The second article, entitled “U of M brass do OK” was written by Tom Brodbeck from the Winnipeg Sun. It makes many of the same points but does so in what Sran felt was a “harsh” manor.
When mentioning U of M president Szathmáry’s 22 per cent raise over two years, Brodbeck made comments such as, “Not bad. That’ll pay for a few Caribbean cruises this year.”
Terry Sargeant, chair of the U of M’s Board of Governors responded to the August 16 article in the Free Press with a letter to the editor entitled, “U of M has its priorities straight.”
Sargeant stated in his response, “To operate a first-class medical-doctoral university requires being able to attract and retain the best faculty, students and administrators . . . If we do not offer competitive compensation, we will not be able to retain the excellent administrators we presently have.”
John Danakas, University of Manitoba’s director of public affairs presented the fact that, “Administrative costs [at the U of M] are at the second lowest of all universities in Canada.”
In response to Szathmáry’s annual salary, Danakas noted, “In fact our president is the second lowest paid university president among similar sized universities in Western Canada and that’s despite the fact that she is the longest serving president among the group.”
Sran said that the letter was not meant as a personal attack. He said he told Szathmáry, “We’re just making sure that the public knows . . . where public money is actually going.”
