On Feb. 25, PCC staff received an email from Dr. Adrien Bennings containing inaccurate information about the compensation package being offered to the PCC Federations. You can read it here. What follows is our response.
Dear Colleagues:
Dr. Bennings’ email to all staff about salary increases (subject line: “Compensation in a Challenging Climate”) is full of misleading and outright false information.
- Her claim that admin’s current offer “results in approximately 13-16% permanent growth in base salary” is not accurate. Our best guess is that she is continuing to conflate step advancement with COLA, and made a math error by adding a 3.5% COLA (instead of the actual offer of 0.35%) to our steps – literally a misplaced decimal.
- STEPS ARE NOT COLA!! Step movement is already guaranteed in our contract. It is not included in the administration’s current offer, which results in less than 1% salary growth over 2 years.
- Even if you factor in step movement, this would not apply to employees at the top step, nor would it be accurate for MORE THAN HALF of our FFAP-represented employees that are part time faculty who experience step advancement less than once per year.
- Unlike PCC managers, the vast majority of our FFAP represented employees start on the bottom of the salary scale, regardless of our education or experience.
👉Steps reward experience. 👈
👉A fair COLA ensures STEPS keep up with inflation.👈
Without COLAs every year, the contract will fail to deliver on the promise of steps. It ABSOLUTELY IS wage stagnation. Without COLAs, members on lower steps would look forward to ending their careers with wages that have the same purchasing power as their entry level salary.
There are Several Egregious Math Errors in Dr. Bennings’ email
Take for example, her claim: “Under PCC’s current offer, comparable faculty salaries will range from $83,892 to $126,849”
- Under management’s current offer, the FT faculty salary range will be $79,175 to $119,389. She inflated the bottom and top of the salary scale by 6% and 6.2% respectively.
- It is important to note that “comparable faculty” is an equivocation. She likely means “full-time faculty” since part-time faculty don’t make anywhere near these amounts.
- Her compensation examples include step movement WHICH IS ALREADY GUARANTEED in the contract and not what we are currently negotiating. See below for our edits:
| False Claim | Facts | Steps vs. COLA |
| “A Faculty member who was at Step 9 in 2024 increases a step from $93,608 to approximately $106,249 in 2026; that’s more than $12,600 more per year.” | A Faculty member who was at Step 9 in 2024-25 increases two steps from $93,608 to approximately $100,000 in 2026-27; that’s more than $6,392 per year. | Step movement accounts for $5,696 of the increase and is already guaranteed by the contract. The College’s 0.35% COLA offer accounts for just $696 of this increase. |
| “… an Academic Professional who was at Level 4, Step 5 in 2024 increases a step from $68,606 to approximately $79,376 in 2026; that’s $10,770 more per year.” | An Academic Professional who was at Level 4, Step 5 in 2024-25 increases two steps from $76,689 to approximately $82,729 in 2026-27; that’s $6,040 more per year. | Step movement accounts for $5,464 of the increase and is already guaranteed by the contract. The College’s COLA offer accounts for just $576 of this increase. |
Basic math errors like the ones contained in today’s email further undermine the credibility of the PCC administration and raise grave concerns about decisions the administration has made around the budget.
Dr. Bennings also DEFENDS HER SALARY adjustment, saying the 2.5% increase she received in June, 2025 “aligned my compensation within the mid-range for the presidential role at Oregon’s higher education institutions.”
With an annual salary of $344,754 per year, Dr. Bennings is BY FAR the highest paid community college president in Oregon, by 40%. In addition to her annual salary, she receives an annual $18,000 car allowance, $12,000 expense account, $1,800 internet connectivity allowance, and a $20,000 yearly retention bonus. The Nationwide median for community college presidents is $273,814.(source). By comparison, the President of Mt. Hood Community College earns $248,000. At Clackamas Community College, the President‘s salary is $240,759. And at Central Oregon Community College, the President earns $220,000.
In her email, Dr. Bennings argues that educators earn too much compared to peer community colleges, while normalizing her own salary by comparing it to Oregon university presidents. We wonder how she would respond to PCC faculty demanding our salaries align with four-year university professors..
PCC’s budget is absolutely bloated by upper level administrator salaries. Between 2019-2024, FFAP negotiated COLAs that brought our wages up by 23%. Meanwhile the salary of several PCC administrator positions increased by more than 50%. Some examples:
- Executive Vice President, increase of 57% (from $185,957 to $292,825)
- Associate Vice President for Marketing and Communications : increase of 80% (from $98,616 to $177,034)
- Chief Financial Officer: increase of 57% (from $185,957 to $292,825)
- Dean of Inclusive and Accessible Education: increase of 58% (from $106,717 to $168,905)
- Director of Learning Technology and Innovation: increase of 76% (from $92,006 to $161,852)
- Director of Payroll: increase of 68% (from 90,872 to $152,616)
See below for more 2024 data!
| Job Category | # of people | Range | Mean |
| Executives | 14 | $174k – $293k | $215k |
| Deans | 41 | $115k – $182k | $151k |
| Directors | 46 | $75k – $185k | $142k |
| Managers | 145 | $75k – $165k | $113k |
| ”Partners” | 22 | $73k – $124k | $95k |
| Executive Assistants* | 15 | $79k – $119k | $93k |
| Supervisors | 13 | $73k – $99k | $86k |
*Executive Assistants are Administrative and/or Confidential employees, not classified
This won’t be the last time we receive misinformation from PCC management. In the future, be sure to check their math.
In solidarity,
Your FFAP Bargaining Team
Alex, Ben, Frank, Kris, Luke, Michelle, and Victoria