Profs not paid as well free press thinks
Magally Zelaya, staff
When the Winnipeg Free Press printed an incorrect average salary of U of M professors the typically contentious issue of salaries sparked debate outside of the bargaining room.
“The Free Press, for some reason, didn’t call us, and published this figure that said that the average salary here at the U of M is $108,000,” said UMFA president Brenda Austin-Smith.
According to Austin-Smith, the current average salary of professors is $87,913 — not $108,042, the figure printed in the Oct. 9 issue of the province-wide paper.
“We had a member get in touch with us when she opened up the Free Press and she read that her salary was somewhere around $100,000. She phoned in and said, ‘Wow, that’s news to me. I’m actually earning $53,000.’”
Even further from the published figure is the median salary, which currently sits at $81,560, according to UMFA.
“There’s a big drop between the average and the median, which tells you that there are people who are getting very well paid and there are lots of people who are not getting well paid.”
She noted that the two largest faculties on campus¬ — arts and science — are among the lowest paid and that “there are a lot of differential salaries.”
“A lot of students don’t realize that we don’t set the opening salary, management does. Some people start well, some people start poorly.”
A letter to the editor clarifying the error was printed in the Oct. 13 issue of the Free Press. Austin-Smith said they were eager to set the record straight and let the public know that “there’s a lot of variation out there.”
The article did not cite a source for the given 2005 salary. Austin-Smith said that the Free Press looked at the annual almanac published by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) that provides salary figures.
“They looked at the CAUT figure for the average salary of a full professor nationally.”
In addition, the article also stated that “a study last year found U of M wages lag behind those of professors in the rest of the West and Ontario,” but again no sources were provided.
The Free Press could not be reached for comment at the time of printing.
Austin-Smith added that she herself does not earn nearly to the reported average. She continued, “I don’t see myself getting to [$108,000] in the years I have left to work.”
