By SUSAN JONES

 

As the bargaining committees for faculty and staff represented by the United Steelworkers continue to negotiate with Pitt’s administration, a big issue this fall for both groups is pay raises. 

 

The University has proposed a freeze on all salary increases for the 2026-27 fiscal year for the approximately 9,000 Pitt employees in the two bargaining units. 

 

The budget approved by the Pitt Board of Trustees in July included a 2% performance-based maintenance salary increase — along with a half percent salary pool for merit, market and equity considerations — for nonrepresented faculty and staff.

 

The Pitt Staff Union, which has been negotiating its first contract since December 2025, said in its bargaining update on Sept. 1 that it rejected a one-time payment of $2,000 to represented staff this year, which would not be included in subsequent years. Instead, the union had in June proposed interim salary increases of 7% or $3,000, whichever was greater, while bargaining continued.

 

The University is dealing with reductions in federal funding for research, increased costs for healthcare, lower net tuition revenue and increased facility costs. When the budget was approved, the University said that each senior vice chancellor area — including offices of the Provost, Health Sciences, and Finance and Operations — “is being asked to reduce costs, reallocating budget dollars to ensure Pitt’s priorities are being met.”

 

This has resulted in most departments looking at a 5% reduction, on top of the 5%  they were asked to cut during the 2025-26 fiscal year.

 

The other new issue that the staff union has raised concerns about is making sure pay grades are aligned with the education, experience and impact of jobs.

 

“Those of us who have been around a while know that the ‘Compensation Modernization’ initiative was supposed to address issues surrounding our compensation structure. In some cases, it did not,” the bargaining committee said in its latest update. “Therefore, we hope to establish a process for the union to request a review of the pay grade that is associated with a job title and a fair resolution of disputes over what pay grade a position should have.”

 

For the faculty union, Melinda Ciccocioppo, the union’s recording secretary and a psychology faculty member, said that “we haven’t received a single counter on any of our economic proposals. At this point, all they’ve told us is that they don’t want to give us even a cost of living adjustment. They want to freeze our salaries.” She noted that a salary freeze is actually a pay cut, because of the rising cost of living.

 

“We think (salaries) should be stable. We think they should be fair,” Ciccocioppo said. “So people with more experience should earn more money — salary compression is a big issue right now. And we think they should be predictable. There should be transparent annual increases so that people can actually plan for their futures at Pitt.”

 

A University spokesperson said that during the negotiating session on Sept. 1, the USW bargaining representatives rejected the University’s counterproposal for a compensation memorandum of understanding, which included a lump sum payment to both full-time and part-time faculty. “The faculty union rejected this proposal and indicated they would rather discuss this year’s annual increase as part of their larger compensation proposals for the (collective bargaining agreement),” the spokesman said.

 

The other big issue for the faculty union, which began negotiating its second contract in January, is job security, particularly for faculty who are reliant on grant money for their salaries.

 

“If you’ve got someone who has been reliably bringing in grant money, and they find themselves in a fix without grants for three months, six months, whatever, we think they should be able to keep their jobs,” Ciccocioppo said. “They shouldn’t just be let go because of the situation in D.C. or just because they are between grants.”

 

There was some bridge money available last year through the provost’s office, Pitt Research and the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences, but Ciccocioppo said it was sporadic. “It’s unclear who gets that money and what determines who gets that money and how much money they can get.”

 

She said the union wants to have a clear, transparent process for providing bridge funding or job continuity for people who find themselves in those situations.

 

Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.

 

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