SANBORN — Niagara County Community College faculty members have “unsustainable” salary levels, the school’s president told The Buffalo News last week.

As the faculty and administration at the college continue in a fourth year without a labor contract, federal data shows the average salary of teaching faculty at the school is the sixth highest among the state’s 30 community colleges.

In the 2008-09 academic year, the average faculty member made $70,371, according to data from the Integrated Post-secondary Education Data System, collected by the U. S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.

The college has been using available salary data for years as a negotiating tool, said NCCC President James P. Klyczek.

“They’re remarkably high, even though not the highest in the state, given that we’re not living in Nassau County,” Klyczek said of the salaries. “We don’t compare ourselves to Nassau.”

Audio: NCCC President James P. Klyczek

The highest average salary for all faculty positions—full professor, associate professor, assistant professor and instructor combined — was $92,581 at Westchester Community College.

Both sides agree the Niagara County salary number is bolstered by a high number of full professors employed at the school.

“It’s not to take anything away from the people who work here, because they earn their salaries,” Klyczek added. “The issue is in moving forward, what’s been created is an unsustainable environment.”

It used to be that public sector jobs paid less than the private sector, but employees had excellent benefits. Today, some public salaries have risen to go along with the strong job security, health insurance and retirement benefits, Klyczek said.

From the administration’s perspective, salaries can be lowered and the school can still perform and effectively compete with other community colleges, including in its ability to attract faculty.

“I don’t want to confuse that, though, with saying that our people are overpaid. We’ve never said that,” Klyczek said. “What we’re saying is we can’t sustain that level and we don’t need to because we’re more than competitive with any of the other institutions that we would be competing [with].”

But that’s not how Joseph F. Colosi, head of the faculty union, sees the situation.

“From our perspective, the administration is just asking for too much in the way of change over one contract,” said Colosi, lead negotiator for the union.

Overall, NCCC faculty salaries have changed little over the past five years, Colosi said, and the average salary for each of the faculty positions at the school is lower than the positional average at all community colleges in the state.

It is because the faculty is “top heavy” with full professors, that the average is skewed, he said.

Audio: Joseph F. Colosi, head of the faculty union

The average full professor at the college makes $78,026, less than the state average of $83,094. Full professors at the Fashion Institute of Technology make an average of $110,548, tops for community colleges in the state.

Colosi asserted NCCC administrators have always used the average at all 30 community colleges in negotiations, rather than the smaller comparison group consisting 12 of similar-sized schools.

Klyczek countered, saying the school has always used the comparison based on size, which is determined by the National Center for Education Statistics. NCCC is considered a “medium-sized” community college, Klyczek said.

The issue of health insurance coverage has been one creating the most friction between the sides of late.

A formal hearing before the Public Employment Relations Board is scheduled for March 10 in Buffalo. It stems from a contention by the faculty union that the school improperly changed health care coverage last year. The change, which the college argues is legal, moved all faculty members under one insurance carrier.

The union says that eliminated choices for its members, though the administration believes there was no harm done because everyone was bumped up into the highest category.

“They really don’t have an urgency any longer to settle,” Colosi said, “because they’re already saving the money they wanted to save through what would have been the negotiation process.”

Klyczek said the college saved between $300,000 and $500,000 by making the health insurance change and called any assertion that the college has less of an incentive to settle because it implemented the change “delusional.”

Additionally, faculty members have the option of taking traditional coverage, as well as joining an HMO.

In addition to the salary figures, the college received a report on how it compares with others in terms of tuition, graduation and retention rates. In all categories, the college has done roughly as well as or better than other medium-sized schools.

NCCC’s favorable comparison in those categories is to the credit of his union members, whose last contract expired at the end of June 2006, Colosi said.

“That says a lot, I think, for our faculty,” he said. “Even though they’ve been without a contract for going on four years, they still are very professional. They still provide the services in the classroom and outside the classroom.”