At the moment I make what I consider to be a great salary particularly when you consider the benefit package that includes excellent health care and a pension. My pension will not be as lucrative as people who have been in positions for 20 plus years but it is helpful. We have a Union. But it is hierarchical. The longer you have been there the greater the benefit to you as an individual. In the “good ole days” you received tenure quickly and skated to the top of the ladder, meaning “Full Professor”, in as short a time as possible deserving or not. The salary bump was very significant. When I arrived in 2011 things had changed. The Administration took a different approach suggesting tenure and promotions would be based on merit. The tenure process was now five years no matter how much you excelled. Promotions? Good luck. Tenure track positions are notoriously stressful particularly if populated by bullies, some with sadistic tendencies. You can find plenty of horror stories by doing an online search with many cases replete with race and gender bias. When you suffer through five years of “well you should be fine…unless” it can be difficult to recover. But I will address that another time. And by the way right now newly tenured people, that can mean fifteen years or more depending on your department, are not in the least bit safe due to declining enrollment which has been exacerbated by the pandemic.
That being said I will state without reservation that I do not want any more money, other than my weekly paycheck. I have enough. I have said this for several years. In fact two years ago when positions were cut due to declining enrollment our Union was in the process of negotiating a raise for us. In a Union Meeting I asked if we should be accepting a raise when people are losing their jobs. There was silence until one of the higher salaried said “it would not be sustainable if we did not get raises.” I let that one go as it was a losing fight at that point. The logic however was not sound. We have great jobs and I guarantee you there would not be an exodus over losing a 2% raise.
If you have been listening to my Podcasts I have identified greed as a mental illness. It literally and figuratively is killing us both as individuals and collectively as a society. Lifestyle diseases such as obesity and type II diabetes are epidemic. They are diseases of over-consumption. Global warming and climate change are also caused by over-consumption. The gap between the wealthy and rest of the world’s population has been widening over the past 40 plus years. Simply put the few have more and the many have less. Is this ethical? Is this what the spiritual traditions that so many claim to adhere to teach us? Complicating this we are in the midst of a global pandemic that has shown us how flawed our economic and healthcare systems are. In the United States we have also discovered that if the government chooses to do so it can dispense assistance to those in need. We also have a massive social movement, Black Lives Matter, that is encouraging even forcing us to consider the damage caused by structural violence such as racism and economic inequality. This is a time to reflect on our lives and our governments and seriously consider changing the way we do business on a personal, economic, and global level. I have enough. I would like everyone else to have enough and I am prepared to offer what I can to assure that they do. Those of us who have more than we need can offer a little. A collective movement towards this end can succeed and move us towards a more just, equitable, and peaceful world.