UW to pay faculty $17.5 million in back pay to settle lawsuit

SEATTLE – The University of Washington has agreed to give its faculty a raise and turn over nearly $17.5 million in back pay, interest and attorney fees to settle a lawsuit brought by professors.

The settlement was approved by regents on Thursday at a meeting in Tacoma, said Stephen Strong, a lawyer for the professors. It came four months after a King County Superior Court judge ruled that the university violated its own policy when it refused to give 3,200 faculty members a 2 percent raise in the 2002-03 school year.

The agreement still must be approved by the judge. It calls for the UW to pay $17.45 million in back pay, interest and attorney fees, and to grant a 2 percent raise to 2,800 faculty members – the other 400 no longer teach at the university – at an estimated cost of $6.2 million a year.

The UW also agreed to pay $50,000 to settle a related public disclosure claim filed by Duane Storti, the associate professor of mechanical engineering who brought the back pay lawsuit. Storti argued that the university withheld documents related to its salary policy.

Storti said he expects to receive “a couple of thousand bucks” from the settlement,. “The bigger things here are the nonmonetary things,” he said. “From my nonlawyer’s point of view, what this case was really about was if your employer can unilaterally decide not to pay you what it promised, is that a real job?”

Strong said the raises are long overdue. The university agreed in 1999 to grant merit raises of at least 2 percent to faculty members as a way to keep their salaries competitive. Up to that point, many of the UW’s raises were going to newly recruited professors and to professors who threatened to leave. They wound up being paid more than some who had been there for many years.

The 2 percent raises were provided every year since 2001 except for 2002-03, which was the subject of the lawsuit. The university argued that the Legislature did not provide funding for a raise that year, but the judge found that the raise was promised by the faculty code, which constituted a contract.

Thirty percent of the settlement amount – $5.2 million – will go to lawyers, while the amount that eligible faculty members will receive will be based on their earnings since 2002.

The settlement money will come from the UW’s unrestricted fund balance, not state-appropriated money or tuition fees, a university spokesman said.

“The top budget priority then and now for this university is ensuring competitive salaries,” UW President Mark Emmert said. “Under this agreement, more salary money is going to our faculty, and that is consistent with our top funding priority.”

The regents also voted Thursday to give Emmert a 5.1 percent raise, to $494,000, retroactive to September.

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