Don't know where this fits, since I'm in neither the "government" nor the "for-profit" sector....but...
For the third year in a row, I'm being asked to sign a contract this spring for the year starting in August, without knowing what my pay is going to be. In one of the previous two years, the dollar change was zero; in the other, it went up by about 1%, or perhaps $55/month before taxes.
Complicating matters: our salary is set according to a common scale for all, with each of us "moving up" one level on the scale each year. Traditionally, this meant we got two kinds of raises every year. One for "experience" (moving to a higher step) and one reflecting the increased demand for people like us (moving every step in the scale up from where it was the previous year). Typically, the step/reward-for-more-experience move was about 0.7% (or maybe $35 bucks a month for me).
Two years ago, this changed. The year before last, I officially moved up a "step", but my salary at step N+1 was exactly the same as it had been the year before at step N.
Now we can of course argue about whether this "step raise" system is economically wise or not. And based on the budget numbers I've seen, I definitely can see the admin's argument that we can't "afford more right now."
But I also know some other things. I know that the tight pursetrings here are not because of some "long term recessionary economy" (or whatever the phrase the admin loves to use in their rationalization -- higher education usually is countercycilcal relative to the business cycle, especially in the first year or so -- school and "additional education" improves one's resume power. And indeed, we had a year or so of higher-than-expected enrollments. I know that the pursestrings are tight because more and more people are questioning whether higher education of the sort traditional colleges/universities is worth the cost. I know the pursestrings are tight because colleges/universities have been binging on physical plant and dubious programs and ancillary services of "the college life", instead of on providing better products in their areas of core competency (i.e., educational services).
College students get more and more stuff on campus -- better living space, better food, better physical and mental health protection, better athletics and arts offerings, etc etc. But the one thing that most people think of as the "essence" or "core" of college -- the "education"? They get less. They make do with larger classes, more canned textbooks and multiple choice exams, less individual faculty attention, less mental challenge, etc etc.
As people have doubtless figured out by now, I see education as having serious problems in this country. Both higher education and primary/secondary. And you've probably also figured out that a part of my negative vision is based on my perceptions of what has happened due to poor decisions by the PTBs where I work.
But I watch this debate about "Walker and the unions" and I think, if I were in Wisconsin, I'd want a solution that got rid of both the unions and the politicians. (And probably the monopoly power of local school boards, too, by getting rid of compulsory education, but that's another argument for another day.)
I look at Walker and the unions, and I see people who see all solutions in terms of the amount that teachers do/do not get paid. Teacher pay, whether it is too high or too low, is at most a symptom of far deeper problems.
And if all we do is focus on the pay question -- if all I do is focus on how little my raises have been, if all my employer does is focus on the additional cost of faculty salary raises -- we keep ignoring the real problem
The real problem is not salaries or public funding. Sorry, folks, it just isn't. The real problem is that what passes for "education" in this country today is fundamentally out of touch with the actual needs of an economy/society as complex and as big and as subject to tech/cultural change as ours.
I don't much care who wins or loses in Walker v. The Unions. In my opinion, unless the people of Wisconsin realize that BOTH Walker AND the Unions are playing losing hands, unless they can find a way to reject them both AND find something better, they're going to keep getting fucked over education-wise.
And no, I don't have a solution. But I do know that the solution doesn't lie with listening people who have, over and over, demonstrated by word and deed that they are part of the problem.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)