Racer's Shouldn't Finish Last

Dear Murray State University Board of Regents, President Dr. Ron K. Patterson, and Vice Presidents,

As Murray State University staff, faculty and student workers, we believe that Racers shouldn’t finish last. We shouldn’t finish last in academic excellence; we shouldn’t finish last in student support; and we shouldn’t finish last in worker compensation. Instead, as President Patterson said at the March 10 budget town hall, Racers should lead from the front.

Under previous administrations, Racers have steadily fallen behind their peers when it comes to worker compensation. Student and Staff hourly employees earn well below the $19.97/hr the Massachusetts Institute of Technology categorizes as a living wage for a single adult with no children in Calloway County. Instructors in many programs remain the lowest paid faculty among our peer institutions identified in the Evergreen study, while tenured and tenure-track faculty in these programs make well below the mean for their areas. Full-time Faculty and Staff all across our institution make tens of thousands of dollars a year below what MIT estimates to be a living wage for their family size in our county.

Indeed, because Murray State workers have not received cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) to keep up with inflation (student workers have not received COLAs at all), many of us now earn far less in real money than we did when we were first hired, having taken de facto pay cuts year after year despite our hard work and faithful service. Someone hired in 2016 making $50,000/yr would make the equivalent of $9,400/yr less today (a loss of over 18% in purchasing power) after receiving the COLAs given in that period. This all while previous administrations grew the university’s investments and rainy-day fund nearly every year since 2009, with investments alone more than doubling over the past 10 years. The university’s current total reserve of $152 million is equivalent to 9 months of operating expenses—around twice the recommended level of 4-5 months. Murray State has the money to compensate workers fairly, but previous leadership consistently chose to underpay us while building up the university’s reserves and prioritizing other campus investments.

We recognize that we have come to this place of drastic undercompensation slowly over time, and that the problem is greater than can be solved in a single day or year. However, we call upon this new administration to begin the process of valuing us not only with their words but with concrete commitments to improving compensation for all campus workers.

First, we urge Dr. Patterson and the Board to Stop the Slide of worker compensation. We demand that, starting this year, salary and hourly pay at all levels at Murray State, from faculty to staff to student workers, be tied to the Federal Consumer Price Index. Workers must be guaranteed an annual cost-of-living adjustment equal to the rate of inflation for the previous year, and departments’ budgets must be adjusted adequately to give student and hourly workers these raises without diminishing their hours.
Second, we urge Dr. Patterson and the Board to commit to Raise the Floor for our lowest paid workers by building toward a campus-wide $15/hr minimum wage over the next 2-4 years.
Third, we ask that Dr. Patterson and the Board strive to Set the Pace for worker compensation by committing to a concrete plan to reevaluate the Evergreen study, with the aim of indexing the lowest Murray State salary to MIT’s living wage calculator for Calloway County and building equitability from there to ensure that faculty and staff salary is competitive among peer institutions.

Our campus works because of its workers. As the staff, faculty, and student workers dedicated to making Murray State the finest workplace we know, we believe that our new leadership can lead from the front by working with us to achieve the equitable compensation necessary for a thriving workforce.