By Daegan Miller
Bob McDowell has spent 30 years at UMass Amherst in IT. “When I started, we were essentially a telephone company,” he says. “Every dorm, every office, every building had landlines, and keeping an accurate database was my main job.” And then about 15 years ago, McDowell dove headfirst into PSU work, first as a delegate, then as the union’s grievance officer and chief steward, and finally on the Salary Administration Program (SAP)—which is where he met Beth Pellettieri.
“I came to UMass about two years ago, and pretty quickly had some questions about what was included in my job,” she says. “So I went to SAP, and Bob helped me navigate through my issues.”
That’s not all he did. SAP was chairless at the time, and Pellettieri, among whose many talents include organizing groups around purpose and efficiency, was interested in potentially taking on the role of leading SAP. “I wanted to streamline the process, clarify how SAP works and what it is, update our procedures, and overhaul what needed overhauling. Bob assured me I could do this, even though I was new to both UMass and PSU.” Pellettieri became the chair of the SAP committee and, along with Amanda Major (“Amanda is really a co-chair,” Pellettieri insists), keeps it humming along.
I sat down with McDowell and Pellettieri recently—it was the final day of McDowell’s UMass Amherst career—to learn more about SAP and why every member should know about it, learn how PSU has changed over the decades, and find out what parting advice McDowell has before he “heads off to read comic books and eat popsicles.”
Daegan Miller (DM): SAP has got to be one of the most important committees that most people haven’t heard of. What is it, and what does it do?
Bob McDowell (BMD): Let’s say you find out that you are being paid significantly less than your co-workers with the same job title. Or maybe, over the course of your career at UMass, you’ve been asked to add so many additional duties that your job description no longer accurately fits what you do. There are fixes for both of these things—equity reviews and position reclassifications—and that’s what SAP does. We help you figure out how to get paid what you’re owed; we help you navigate that process, and this work happens every day, every year, whether or not we’re in bargaining. SAP and grievance is where you feel like you’re getting something for your dues.
Beth Pellettieri (BP): Think of a tree. Bargaining is the beautiful flowers that come out every so often. Those flowers tend to get most of the attention, but that tree has limbs and a trunk and exists every day the rest of the year. There are no flowers without the limbs and trunk—they are the core of that tree. SAP, along with the grievance committee, is the limbs and trunk, and Bob has been the epitome of that core for the past 15 years.
DM: I went up for an equity review a few years back. After only three years in my position, I was already the lowest-paid person both in my office among my teammates with the same job title and across the university—even though I was one of the most senior people with that title. There had been a lot of turnover during COVID, and then a good bit of hiring afterwards; those new hires were all making more than me. So I went to SAP, and they got me about a six percent adjustment.
What surprised me is that it didn’t feel like a fight with management to get my equity adjustment. It felt like I just filled out a few forms, got my supervisor’s blessing, and then about two months later I got an email from HR congratulating me on making more.
BP: Bargaining can often feel contentious because we’re organizing for things we don’t yet have. In SAP and grievance, we’re defending what we’ve already won, and it is important to have good people in management with whom we work. Right now, we work with great contacts who really want to move through the equity and reclassification appeal caseload quickly.
BMD: It really depends who is in management. Until about 2020, SAP was dead in the water—it could take years to complete a case. But then management decided to commit more resources and work collaboratively with us, and our team at the time—Kathy Rhines and JoAnne Martone—worked tirelessly and selflessly to catch up. But you need people in management who respect the contract and our members, and we have that now.
BP: Bob likes to say that on SAP we need to “have full acceptance of what is.” We are grounded in the contract, and when management is, too—and we can maintain a good working relationship—we can get a lot done for our members. Jo Martone has been a champion through it all.
BMD: When I started as the grievance officer, defending members against contract violations, I went into every meeting with management angry and ready to fight, and then I realized that I wasn’t going to win that way. I learned that you need to be calm and polite and treat people the way you want to be treated. The goal, at the end of the day, is to achieve positive outcomes for members. My advice to anyone doing this in the future is that you get more flies with honey.
DM: Bob, you’ve been here for 30 years. What would you say about the state of our union?
BMD: PSU has changed mostly for the better in the past 10 years. We have had strong, united leadership, and that ripples all the way down through the union. PSU has had its ups and downs over the years, but when you have good leadership, it’s smooth sailing.
As far as my parting advice to SAP, I don’t have any to give because the team is amazing: they’re so smart, so committed, they bring new technical experience—and Amanda Major is doing a ton of foundational back-end work to get SAP on a solid footing.
DM: Beth, as the new SAP co-chair, and given that SAP flies under most members’ radars, what do you wish every PSU member knew about your committee?
BP: One of the most important things for every member to know is that being an active member is also about self-advocacy. Every member needs to know how to get started with an equity review and position reclassification, and the details are on our website. When you go up for one of these reviews, you don’t have to involve PSU, but it’s a mistake not to. We can get you the data to build a stronger case. And you have the right to unlimited equity reviews. You can go up for a position reclassification every three years per position. And you have the right to unlimited equity reviews or position description reviews, but we recommend not more than one every three years.
SAP is a valuable middle space between doing nothing and taking over the megaphone at a rally. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Learn the rules, stand up for yourself, and then share with your colleagues what you’ve done and how they can do it, too. You don’t have to wait for bargaining to come around to make a real change.
BMD: We need to keep letting folks know that your dues are more than slogans and cheers—SAP and grievance deliver results. If you’re in trouble, you have real talented people who can help. We might not always win everything we want, but we don’t usually get our asses kicked. We definitely have real wins, and at the very least, we can mitigate the worst harms.
Interested in joining the Salary Administration Program team? Reach out to PSU.SAP@external.umass.edu.
