Faculty at McMaster have ratified a new three-year contract. Of those members who voted, 98 per cent were in favour of the salary and compensation package which provides annual wage increases of three per cent in each year of the agreement. The current agreement expires on June 30.

The agreement was ratified by McMaster's 768 tenured faculty on March 28. The audited vote results were released today. The agreement runs from July 1, 2002 to June 30, 2005.

Acting University President Peter Sutherland said the contract provides stability and predictability for the University and its faculty and students.

McMaster University Faculty Association president Tom Davison is pleased with the ballot results.

“Our remuneration committee thought this was an excellent agreement for our members and the result shows the members agreed. We've improved salaries across the board and adjusted the Career/Progress Merit system to make it a better mechanism to reward individual faculty excellence. It's a good deal for the University, too, in that it provides a basis for planning through the period of the double cohort and higher enrolments generally.”

The deal includes an annual $500 market adjustment to faculty salaries in each year to ensure McMaster can recruit and retain the best and the brightest. “Recruiting faculty is a highly competitive process and, increasingly, the market is becoming an international one. This allocation will help put McMaster on a level playing field with other excellent universities in its efforts to attract and retain a first-rate professoriate,” said Sutherland.

In addition to the across-the-board increase of three per cent in each year, the contract includes adjustments to the floor salary for assistant professors that underpins the faculty Career Progress/Merit (CP/M) system. The system individually rewards tenured faculty for achievements in research, teaching and service. The average faculty salary is $83,333.

The contract in brief:

Negotiations between the two parties began last December.