Ongoing objections from staff and faculty have led to the changes being placed “under review until further notice”
Over the last several weeks, Reed College staff and faculty have raised ongoing objections to the college’s proposed changes to the staff compensation system, changes that have been placed on indefinite hold for “further review” at the time of this writing. As several audience members noted at Tuesday’s staff meeting, the proposed changes have often been somewhat technical and opaque. In Staff Pay Explained, Declan Bradley does his best to clarify what the proposed changes would have meant for staff across Reed’s campus. In Staff Continue Objections to Proposed Pay Changes, Declan and L Urena recount the events of Tuesday’s all staff and faculty meeting, and the questions, comments, and concerns staff raised for HR. And in Faculty Raise Concerns Over Staff Pay-Scale Reconfiguration, Madeleine Voth recounts the events of last week’s faculty meeting.
“This really felt like we were down, and we were getting kicked.”
– Anonymous Staff Member, Tuesday staff meeting
We understand, of course, that this is both incomplete and rushed, as breaking news often is, and welcome any and all corrections from staff, faculty, or administration. Comment below, or shoot us an email, and we’ll do our best to update this page in real time as we learn more.
Staff Continue Objections to Proposed Pay Changes, Now on Hold
At an all staff meeting on Tuesday, college employees expressed ongoing concerns about proposed changes to staff pay, which had been paused and placed “under review until further notice” by the time the meeting began. College President Audrey Bilger began the meeting by addressing the roughly 100 staff present (as estimated by two Quest reporters who attended), saying that she valued all staff at Reed…
Continue readingFaculty Raise Concerns Over Staff Pay-Scale Reconfiguration
Monday’s faculty meeting opened on a full house, and on top of other things, included discussions of additions of academic buildings and new classes, inclusive classroom dynamics, equitable distributions of work, and a lengthy discussion about the recent overhaul in the pay scale for the staff here at Reed. With the bang of a gavel and wishes for a happy first day of spring, the…
Continue reading
Staff Pay Explained: What Would Have Changed, and Why Staff and Faculty Objected
Over the last several weeks, Reed College staff and faculty have raised ongoing objections to the college’s proposed changes to the staff compensation system, changes that have since been placed on indefinite hold for “further review”. As several audience members noted at Tuesday’s staff meeting, the proposed changes have often been somewhat technical and opaque.…
Continue readingExplore the Data
A Note on How We Obtained this Data
This analysis is based on a series of four files posted to the Reed HR website: staff-pay-ranges.pdf, job-titles-and-grades.xlsx, non-exempt-grades.xlsx, and exempt-grades.xlsx. Three of these four files have since been taken down, and only job-titles-and-grades.xlsx remains, but the Quest is working from locally saved copies. Upon close examination of the data, Quest reporters discovered that two of the files, exempt-ranges.xlsx and non-exempt-grades.xlsx, contained secondary data tables titled “Exempt Ranges – Hidden” and “Non-Exempt Grades – Hidden” respectively.
These two hidden tables appear to contain data on proposed pay ranges for grades 11-17, which staff had requested at Tuesday’s staff meeting and been denied. The Quest’s working theory is that, at some point, someone working in a large Excel project intended to export only a single sheet tab, likely “Exempt Ranges” or “Non-Exempt Grades,” but instead accidentally exported and published the entire Excel project, including the hidden tables.
After consulting with lawyers from the Student Press Law Center, the Quest has decided that, in light of staff questions on the matter, we have an obligation to publish this data.
We would like to make clear that none of our reporters engaged in unprofessional tactics or attempted to gain access to confidential information. These are the exact files that Reed HR published on their own website, and anyone with an internet connection had access to them for several days before they were taken down. Nevertheless, as a concession to privacy concerns, the editorial board has decided not to publish the raw data tables or source code — as we do in other data driven stories — and instead will only refer to the data in visualizations and generalized ranges for each pay grade.
Something we should know?
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