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From your (usually silent) Editor:
The effort the University Administration made to avoid correcting the
$1768 pay error in this case has to have cost far more than that small sum.
Their last minute offer of $2400 would have saved just $363.20, surely less
than the hourly cost of the lawyers and administrators involved in proposing
it. If the issue were money, the rational thing would be to pay a claim like
this, and in fact six-figure claims also have six-figure attorney's bills that
suggest earlier settlements would be economical in those cases as well.
What about these WAGE cases makes the University so determined to
win at any cost? This case in particular reminds me of the husband who
beats his wife to death when she burns the soup. The University's reaction
is out of all proportion to the issue involved, unless the real issue is
control. It's hard to believe that the Administration could see the
complaints of a handful of women as threatening to their authority, yet that
is how they react.
Perhaps, in addition to supporting individual women faculty, we need
to find a way to change the adversarial dynamic of these cases. If the
University Administration could be made to see that prompt and just
settlements cost less in the long run and are also less damaging to all
concerned than protracted battles, then everyone would win, including the
taxpayers.
Jane Lundin
-wage@wage.org-