For those who were not able to attend Tuesday’s General Membership meeting here are some updates regarding our salary increases and some important changes to the timelines for personnel actions.

Salary Increases

The Faculty and ESU contracts were included in a supplemental funding bill that has passed the House and Senate in early April with some differences that will be resolved in a conference committee.  Complicating the timeline for this is the FY 2027 Budget from the House which was released on April 15.  Between submitting amendments to this, their April vacation week and full consideration of the House’s FY ’27 Budget, this conference committee likely will not work on reconciling these differences until May.

HR has informed the Faculty Federation that they are working on the calculations needed to implement the salary increases and determine the retroactive pay owed to people — this last requires an individual calculation for each employee.  With the delay getting the final supplemental funding bill out of the conference committee, the University will not receive the funds until sometime in May at the earliest which means that members will not see any salary increases or retroactive pay until the second pay period in May or even June.

Those people who have retired this year or as a part of the most recent VSIP will receive any retroactive pay due to them, and the salary reported to the State Retirement Board will reflect the percentage increases from 2025 and 2026 that are due to them.

Eligibility for these salary increases is determined by the annual evaluations, with a RECOMMENDED or HIGHLY RECOMMENDED from either the Department FEC or Chairperson needed to get the increases to base salary. For those individuals who applied for promotion or did PMYR this year, the overall ratings from the Department FEC and Chairperson in these replace the annual evaluation.  Those individuals on sabbatical shall receive the salary increases.

PTLs should also receive retroactive pay for courses taught after January 1, 2025.  

Personal Action Timelines

The recently ratified 2024-2027 CBA requires that HR notify by March 1 those faculty who have meet the time-in-rank requirement to be eligible for promotion next academic year and those faculty who intend to apply for promotion to inform their Chair, Dean and Provost by May 1.   

Obviously, due to the contract being finalized in mid-March, the deadline for HR to notify people could not be met. To accommodate this situation for this (implementation) year these date will be modified.  I have suggested dates of May 7 for HR to inform people and May 21 for faculty to submit notification of their intent to apply for promotion.  This provides time to those faculty and their Chair to select the required external reviewers before the end of the academic year.  

For teaching faculty, please be aware that the time-in-rank as an Assistant Teaching Professor before being eligible to apply for promotion to Associate Teaching Professor has been reduced to 4 years, with the application for promotion with continuous appointment being submitted in the Fall of the 5th year.

For those members who applied for promotion this year, HR has informed the Faculty Federation that, because of the Provost’s extended absence, the Provost’s review and recommendation letter will not be done by the contractually required deadlines.  This will impact promotion to Full Professor and Commonwealth Professor as well as promotion for teaching and clinical faculty.  For those individuals applying for tenure, they will receive the Provost’s review and recommendation letter as these go to the UMass Board of Trustees for final approval.

HR has been reminded that faculty are allowed 7-days after receiving the Provost’s review and recommendation to submit additional material before it goes to the Chancellor for the final decision, and this needs to happen before the summer non-response period begins on June 1.  As a practical matter, as many of these individuals will be involved in the annual evaluation of their colleagues, the Provost’s review and recommendation would need to be completed no later than May 14.  HR has told the Federation that the Provost’s Office cannot meet this deadline and the Provost’s review and recommendation will be made available to application in September 2026.  This delay in receiving the Provost’s review does not impact eligibility for the forthcoming salary increases.

Tuesday’s general membership meeting was the last one for this academic year. As we begin the last few weeks of classes and final exams,  I hope that it has been a mostly productive semester for everyone and I trust that people are looking forward to the summer to recover and spend time on their scholarship with fewer distractions.

In Solidarity!