Muhlenberg College
PA-9: Employee Compensation

The Living Wage Index for Allentown, Pennsylvania, according to MIT's Living Wage Calculator, is $10.79/hr. The number of staff and faculty that are paid more than $10.79/hr is 738 out of 758 total employees. This represents 97.4% of the staff and faculty. The number of employees of contractors that receive sustainable compensation is 107 out of approximately 187. The number of contractors on campus varies and for the reporting period it is between 187 and 193. Thus, approximately 57.2% of the contractors on campus are compensated more than $10.79/hour.

The College has adopted a compensation philosophy, approved by the Compensation Committee of the Board of Trustees, that aims to pay competitive salaries and provide comprehensive affordable benefits to all employees. We compare salaries using CompData local survey (both state and local data) including standards within the Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges. (LVAIC)

Regular, full-time employees
• Housekeeping staff are the lowest hourly paid regular full-time employees. Start rate is $10.90/hour, $22,672/year; Benefits for this position would include: health insurance coverage (with a payroll deduction within the Affordable Care Act guidelines); reimbursement of $400 of the individual $500 in-network deductible annually (all eligible employees making less than $32,000/yr get $400 of the $500 in-network deductible reimbursed); tuition scholarship plan which includes full tuition coverage for dependents to attend Muhlenberg after the employee has two years of service; employer-paid life insurance and long-term disability plans; retirement accounts funded at 10% of salary per year with no employee contribution required for all full-time employees after two years of service.
Regular, part-time employees
• This would be part-time LSC desk staff, $8.37/hour. Part-timers have no benefits unless working 800+ hours/year (at 800 hours they get pro-rated vacation), or 1000+ hours/year (at 1000 hours they get the college retirement contribution).
Temporary (non-regular) staff
• Same pay rates as above, Temporary employees are not eligible for benefits.
Temporary (non-regular, adjunct or contingent) faculty
• Part-time/temporary/adjunct faculty are paid per course, and are not eligible for benefits. An adjunct for a regular one unit class is paid $4,340/course.
Student employees
• Minimum wage

• Sodexo, a dining/catering service that maintains the functioning of all of our dining services, is the only on-site contractor that Muhlenberg utilizes. There are 193 Sodexo employees, which includes full-time, part-time, and student employees. To make sure its employees receive sustainable compensation, Sodexo North America’s human resources department uses a wage matrix. A wage matrix is a system where the starting wages of employees are gaged using average wages of employees of other companies with similar positions in the same geographic area. This way, Sodexo can offer competitive wages to avoid losing talent to other businesses in the industry. Also, all employees’ wages are increased by roughly 3% annually so their purchasing power can keep up with inflation.

• Faculty salaries are compared for each rank to the AAUP salary survey for category IIB Institutions, Manager salaries are compared to CUPA salary data for Bachelor's institutions, and non-exempt employee salaries are compared to local salary survey data. Benefits for all employee categories are compared to the benefits offered by our overlap colleges and the LVAIC colleges/universities to give us a more complete picture of how our total compensation compares.

Regular, full-time employees
• Housekeeping staff are the lowest hourly paid regular full-time employees. Start rate is $10.90/hour, $22,672/year; Benefits for this position would include: health insurance coverage (with a payroll deduction within the Affordable Care Act guidelines); reimbursement of $400 of the individual $500 in-network deductible annually (all eligible employees making less than $32,000/yr get $400 of the $500 in-network deductible reimbursed); tuition scholarship plan which includes full tuition coverage for dependents to attend Muhlenberg after the employee has two years of service; employer-paid life insurance and long-term disability plans; retirement accounts funded at 10% of salary per year with no employee contribution required for all full-time employees after two years of service.
Regular, part-time employees
•
Temporary (non-regular) staff

This would be part-time LSC desk staff, $8.37/hour. Part-timers have no benefits unless working 800+ hours/year (at 800 hours they get pro-rated vacation), or 1000+ hours/year (at 1000 hours they get the college retirement contribution).

Same pay rates as above, Temporary employees are not eligible for benefits.

Part-time/temporary/adjunct faculty are paid per course, and are not eligible for benefits. An adjunct for a regular one unit class is paid $4,340/course.

Minimum wage.

Muhlenberg does offer a socially responsible investment option for retirement plans to its employees. This takes the form of the CREF "SOCIAL CHOICE" investment option with a TIAA-CREF retirement annuity vendor.

The number of employees listed is only available as a snapshot from the date when this response was submitted. The IC 3 number of employees is based on the Course Book Annual report, which is published by the College each year.

John Pasquerello, Muhlenberg Dining, also contributed to the reporting of this credit.