How IU's Merit-Based Salary Increases Will Work

Kyle Stokes / StateImpact Indiana

Indiana University's Bloomington campus.

The Indiana University Board of Trustees approved an operating budget Friday that calls for $19.8 million worth of salary increases across the statewide system‘s campuses.

The budget includes what amounts to an average 1.5 percent pay bump on all campuses, honoring a union-negotiated salary increase. But some of the IU system’s more-than-18,500 employees statewide could see larger increases than that.

That’s because on most campuses, including IU Bloomington, departmental bosses will be able to give out additional merit-based salary increases. On those campuses, each division would get 2.2 percent more dollars to pay for employee salaries and benefits.

University spokesperson Mark Land tells StateImpact IU South Bend and IUPUI are the only campuses where there wasn’t enough money to pay for additional merit-based increases. (Each IU campus has a degree of financial independence.)

In a statement, Land writes the pay hikes reflect a university focus “on maintaining affordable excellence.” University officials directed nearly two-thirds of new revenues to pay for the salary increases.

Land says 6 percent of employees will not see pay increases this year. He stressed the process will come down to decisions made by individual managers based on annual performance reviews.

Officials with Communication Workers of America IU Local 4730 — a union representing support staff on the Bloomington campus and clerical workers on the IU Northwest campus — criticized the decision to provide merit-based increases as “union-busting, plain and simple.”

“The key to any merit system is a fair system for assessment of staff performance, and an important tool is the annual review. While annual reviews are required in policy we know many staff do not get them,” union president Edward Vasquez writes in a statement.

Vasquez writes the union has been denied opportunities to negotiate the metrics used for a merit-based system.