Fall 2015 Pay Increases

Employee Compensation

As I previously mentioned at the opening staff and faculty meetings, there are several state and JMU-based compensation initiatives that I am pleased to share with you. I’ll address each one in chronological order:

• First, as many of you already know, with state and institutional support, all eligible faculty, administrative and professional faculty, classified staff and wage employees will receive a 2% salary increase. You must have been employed Full-time as of May 10, 2015 and remain employed full-time on August 10, 2015 to be eligible. For those who are 12-month employees, you will notice the change in your August 31st pay advice. For those who are less-than-12-month employees or those who are on leave of Absence (LOA) you will notice the change in your first pay advice after returning to active working status.  Instructional faculty with 10-month contracts will notice the change on the September 16 pay advice.

• The Commonwealth also approved compression pay adjustments of $65 per year of state service for classified employees, with a minimum of 5 years, and up to a maximum of 30 years of continuous state service.

• An additional 2% base salary increase was given for classified employees in state-designated high turnover roles.

A more detailed review of the above compensation adjustments can be found in the FAQs on the human resources website.

In addition to the above, we have budgeted funding to support several strategically important internal compensation initiatives. The following compensation adjustments are effective November 25, 2015 and will be reflected in the December 16 pay advice:

• For instructional faculty members there will be a 1% merit pool adjustment based on the college’s performance measures and expectations. To be eligible for the variable increase, faculty must be employed full-time as of August 25, 2014 and remain employed full-time on November 25, 2015.

• In collaboration with the Compensation Advisory Council we are in the process of piloting a means to identify and address inversion and compression issues for instructional faculty. This coming November a limited pool of funds has been made available to address some of these issues. In the coming weeks we will work with the Deans and Academic Unit Heads to determine and adjust faculty with the most pressing salary concerns related to inversion and compression situations.  This process will be administered in conjunction with 1% merit increase noted above.

• We are also working on an Administrative and Professional faculty salary compression adjustment for years of JMU and state service.  Eligible A&P faculty with 10 to 20 years of continuous service will receive $50 per full year of service. Eligible A&P faculty with 21 to a maximum of 30 years of continuous service will receive $95 per full year of service.

To be eligible for the compression increase, you must have completed at least 10 full years of continuous full-time service at JMU as of July 1, 2015 (those with JMU full-time hire dates of July 1, 2005 or before). Employees with less than 10 years of continuous JMU service are not eligible. In addition, you must remain employed as a full-time A&P faculty member on November 25, 2015 and have an acceptable performance rating on the most recent A&P Faculty performance evaluation. Previous state service years will be included in the total years of service for those with at least 10 complete years of continuous full-time service at JMU and those who have no break in service while transitioning to JMU.

• In addition, we will administer an In-Band-Adjustment process for classified and wage employees. Please contact your HR Consultant or visit the Human Resources IBA page  for more information on the process and eligibility.