NSU Provost and musician Alan LaFave asked legislators at Aberdeen’s Saturday crackerbarrel to discuss the impact another year of no raises for state employees would have on our universities’ ability to recruit and retain quality faculty. Senator Jason Frerichs (D-1/Wilmot) said the sensible things we expect Democrats to say: low pay hurts morale for professors and all state employees. He tied the question to certain legislators’ effort to take away Regental employees’ collective bargaining rights. Senator Frerichs said he hears strong interest from his Republican colleagues in helping all state employees get the pay they deserve… so there should be no doubt that we’ll find the money to raise pay in higher ed, right?
Rep. Lana Greenfield (R-2/Doland) cast her usual vagueries about low pay being a problem everywhere. She lumped teachers in with nurses and doctors and other “caring professions” and said nothing about specific legislation or funding sources. She said people “have to step up and cover for other people.”
The quiet fun came when Lana’s son got up and disagreed with her. Senator Brock Greenfield (R-2/Clark) shared his mom’s vagueries, but at the end of his sweet mostly-nothings, he dissed his mom’s support for banning collective bargaining at public universities (scroll to 8:15).
Noting that he predicted the swift demise of Senator Phil Jensen’s really bad idea about ending licensing requirements for sign language interpreters, the Senate Pro-Tem said, “I would guess that the collective bargaining issue will go away fairly quickly as well.”