University employees meeting certain performance qualifications will receive pay raises starting in the 2011-2012 fiscal year, President Richard Brodhead officially announced Monday.
The raises will go into effect July 1, Brodhead wrote in a Monday email to University faculty and staff, who have not received salary increases since 2009, when Duke froze salaries across the University.
“The suspension of the annual pay raise for the last two years protected hundreds of jobs at Duke and prevented the widespread layoffs suffered elsewhere,” Brodhead said. “But it’s time to return to a more normal approach to recognizing the good work of Duke employees.”
Each school within the University will receive a 3 percent increase in funding that deans can use for salary increases and other expenditures, such as promotions and faculty retention efforts, said Provost Peter Lange. Individual employee raises will be at the discretion of each school’s dean and will be based on performance evaluations.
“What we announced was that a 3 percent pool would be available as a minimum within each school,” Lange said. “Different deans are approaching this differently.”
The process for instituting salary increases for University staff will be similar. Administrative managers—who will also receive a 3 percent increase in their funding pool—will be able to determine individual pay raises for administrative staff, said Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations.
The announcement does not pertain to Duke University Health System employees—whose pay operates on a different calendar—or to employees covered by collective bargaining agreements.
The announcement of the increase comes almost two months before the Board of Trustees meeting in May, when Trustees will officially approve the pay raise. The University received pre-approval for the increase during the Trustees’ February meeting in order to give administrators time to plan for the change, Schoenfeld said.
“Since salary increases are effective July 1, the work and recommendations have to come soon,” he noted.
No University employees have received raises since the suspension announced in March 2009 with the exception of a select group of employees below a certain pay grade. Those who made $50,000 or less in fiscal year 2010 and $80,000 or less in fiscal year 2011 were granted one-time payments of $1,000 in each respective year if they received satisfactory performance reviews.
Although Brodhead’s email officially announced the salary increase, public talk of pay raises began in the Fall. Brodhead referenced plans for a “modest salary increase” in a Sept. 22 email to employees when he also revealed the 13 percent return of the University’s endowment in fiscal year 2009-2010.
“Everybody is feeling very pleased that we’re in a position, based on all the aggressive cost management that’s gone on over the past two years, to reinstate our performance-based salary increases,” said Vice President for Human Resources Kyle Cavanaugh, who came to Duke in February 2009, shortly before the suspension of pay raises. “Now we’ll return to the more normal, performance-based system.”
The combination of “reviving financial markets” and cost-cutting measures led to the increase, Brodhead wrote in his email, adding that the University will still need to be cautious in the future due to the uncertain nature of its revenue sources.
“It is appropriate that the whole Duke community should benefit from our improving financial circumstances, since you helped to create the improvement,” he said.
Zachary Tracer contributed reporting.
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