Open letter on staff wages

The following letter was sent to Vice President of Human Resources Karen Miller, Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration David Provost, and President Laurie Patton.

Dear Karen and Dave,

We are very glad that the wages for incoming workers at Middlebury have been raised to something much closer to a livable wage. We realize that the college's primary purpose was to be competitive and thus salaries were raised for entry level positions, but we are concerned that this has created wage compression and a sense of serious dissatisfaction among our longest and most dedicated employees.

We believe the issue of wage-compression must be addressed. As you can imagine, for people who have been here for many years, even decades, it seems incomprehensible that their salaries should be the same as or just barely higher than incoming employees.

We hope you will consider issuing an announcement as soon as possible about how long-term employees will see their wages increase in the near future in order to compensate them appropriately.

Thank you for your consideration.

Signed,

Laurie Essig

Gloria Gonzáles Zenteno

Ellery Foutch

Kevin Moss

Ellen Oxfeld

Patricia Saldarriaga

Shawna Shapiro

Michael Sheridan

Yumna Siddiqi

Daniel Silva

Rebecca Tiger

Max Ward

Catharine Wright