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Board
proposes Dues hike to increase lagging salaries
May,
2001
Concerned
that current salaries are not competitive enough to attract and retain
quality staff for the Massachusetts Conference, the Board of Directors
will ask Annual Meeting delegates to add an extra $1 a year for the
next three years to Fellowship Dues to fund an increase.
“In our search for new Conference staff at the executive and support
level, we have become very aware of the need to increase our staff salaries,”
said Interim Conference Minister and President Erwin R. Bode. “We are
not as competitive as we would like to be in recruiting new persons
and in maintaining high morale with our existing staff.”
Since
1988, Conference salaries have increased by 9.5 percent less than the
amount the consumer price index has increased, meaning the buying power
of staff salaries is just over 90 percent of what it was 12 years ago.
At the executive level the Board is proposing raising the Associate
Conference Minister salaries to a level equal to the average salary
of senior pastors of Conference churches with 500 to 999 members.
“The Conference lags significantly behind our larger local churches
in what we are able to pay our senior staff,” Bode said. “In order for
a senior pastor of one of our larger churches to take a job as an Area
Minister, he or she would have to take a 20 percent cut in pay, on average.”
Currently, the nine Associate Conference Ministers - five area ministers
and four program ministers - earn an average salary of $55,509, including
housing and a social security allowance that was rolled into the salary
in 1990. The average salary of ministers in the large Conference churches
is $69,800, including housing and a social security allowance.
To bring the pay of those Associate Conference Ministers up to the level
of the pastors of large churches, the Conference would need an additional
$163,500 per year for their salaries and benefits.
The Board is also proposing a 10 percent increase over three years for
its middle management positions and a 14 percent increase over three
years in support staff salaries. Those would be in addition to annual
cost-of-living adjustments.
The 14 percent for support staff was based on data from the US Department
of Labor, as well as recent experience in trying to hire a new administrative
assistant.
The Conference would need an additional $78,000 a year for that part
of the proposal.
The Board would not be funding an addition to the Conference Minister
and President’s salary through this Fellowship Dues increase, because
when the Minister and President search began that salary was increased
to be competitive with the salaries paid by other large United Church
of Christ conferences.
Bode said he understands that a larger-than-usual increase in Fellowship
Dues to pay for Conference salaries will not be easy for local churches,
especially when so many of their own pastors and lay workers are underpaid.
But, he said, the hope is that churches will be strengthened – and thereby
be better able to compensate employees – by the work surrounding the
Vision for Renewal and Growth. In the meantime, he said, the Conference
itself needs to set an example of fair compensation in order to advocate
for it in the churches.
“And, of course, the Conference can best serve all our churches and
clergy if we can attract highly capable and talented individuals to
fill our staff positions,” he said.
According
to an action taken at the 194th Annual Meeting, the Conference can increase
Fellowship Dues annually at a rate no greater than the average increase
of the current local expenses of all congregations in the Conference
over the previous three years. The $1 increases each year for 2002,
2003 and 2004 would be on top of those customary increases.
What that means for 2002 is that Fellowship Dues would normally increase
by $.35 per member, to $9. This proposal calls on Annual Meeting to
instead increase dues to $10 a member for 2002.
The Board found that increasing Fellowship Dues would be the most plausible
way to raise the funds needed to increase salaries. Without the Dues
increase, Our Church’s Wider Mission Basic Support would have to increase
by $655,000, or 29 percent over 2000 Support, to pay for the salary
increases. The other alternative would be to increase the Conference’s
endowment by $4.9 million.
At last year’s Annual Meeting, which voted to increase the amount of
Our Church’s Wider Mission Basic Support that is withheld by the Conference
in order to fund the Vision for Renewal and Growth programming, delegates
expressed a willingness to increase Fellowship Dues.
The Meeting’s delegates approved a “sense of the meeting” asking the
Board of Directors to re-examine the formula for setting Fellowship
Dues, with several delegates stating that they felt the dues were too
low.
If this plan is approved at Annual Meeting, the Board of Directors plans
to work on educating Associations and local churches about the need
for increasing salaries.