An alleged breach of the lecturers’ union contract by the University has pushed the two parties to seek arbitration to settle a dispute over pay raises.

The Lecturers’ Employees Organization is accusing the University of using “creative accounting” to move money from one “fund” to another in order to avoid larger pay raises for lecturers. The organization contends these moves meant the difference between a 4.1 percent and a 2 percent salary increase for University lecturers this year.

The four funding accounts in question from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts are the “A Fund,” “B Fund,” “C Fund” and “Super C Fund." Though not defined explicitly, these funds serve different purposes, but together cover all parts of faculty salaries in LSA.

According to documents obtained by LEO through a Freedom of Information Act request, the “A Fund” is the average faculty salary program in LSA and is available to academic units to distribute to faculty. The documents, which are signed by Jeff Frumkin, associate provost and senior director for academic human resources, state “Virtually all faculty members are eligible to receive an increase from the ‘A Fund.’” In recent years, the “A Fund” has fallen from 62.6 percent of LSA’s entire compensation for the year in 2005 to 38.1 percent in 2009.

The “B Fund” is used specifically for promotion and retention, for example, when a faculty member becomes an associate professor or professor. Over the last five years, the “B Fund” has held steady at around 20 percent of LSA’s entire compensation for the year.

The controversy lies with the “C Fund” and “D Fund” — or as it’s called the “Super C Fund.”

According to the LEO documents obtained through FOIA, the “C Fund is used to recognize faculty members’ special achievements (e.g. in service, scholarship, instruction) and may also be used to address structural inequities in the salary program.” All monies awarded from the “C Fund” are recommended by a department and approved by the dean. Since 2005, the percentage of this fund relative to the entire compensation for the year has varied widely, standing at about 34 percent of the total compensation in 2007 and then dropping to 11 percent of the total compensation the following year. In 2008, the “C Fund” comprised about 20 percent of the total compensation for the year.

The “Super C Fund” isn’t used by the college or dean’s office to fund the faculty salary program, according to the FOIA documents. Instead, it is used by the dean’s office to “account for relatively small corrections to faculty salary anomalies,” the documents state. The example given in the documents is when LSA must average two different salary rates for a single faculty member.

The documents state that in certain years, like 2008 and 2009, LSA specifically used a portion of the “C Fund” for “strategically targeted purposes." One example is when LSA improved gender pay gaps in the college. After only comprising 0.3 percent of the college’s entire compensation for 2005 and 2.8 percent for 2007, the value of the “Super C Fund” shot up to 30.4 percent of LSA’s total compensation in 2008 and 20.6 percent in 2009. Awards from the “Super C Fund” are also recommended by the department and must be approved by the dean.

American Culture and History Lecturer Catherine Daligga, co-chair of LEO, said in an interview yesterday that LEO determined University officials were switching money from the “A Fund,” where money for salary increases is usually housed, to the “C Fund,” which University officials say they use for retention, promotion and equity. The categories of retention, promotion and equity are excepted from consideration in pay raises for lecturers according to the union’s contract with the University.

Because the University moved money to the “C Fund” and “Super C Fund,” lecturers’ salaries increased by 2 percent, instead of by 4.1 percent, Daligga and LEO contend.