. . . a university has really become your home when you hear that students who graduated from another department got into really great grad schools and it makes you extremely happy.

Can anybody explain why so much hullabaloo is surrounding the introduction of a two-tier wage system at Chrysler? This is what the system is about:

The newest workers earn about $14 an hour; longtime employees earn double that. . .

The gap in wages between regular and entry-level workers has created dissent in U.A.W. ranks. Some long-term employees have demonstrated against the two-tier system and called for it to be abolished. Mr. King, however, has focused on getting meaningful pay raises for the lower tier rather than eliminating it.

At the big Labor Day parade in Detroit, union activists chanted “equal pay for equal work,” and some full-paid workers said they were willing to forgo a wage increase in the new contract to help the lower-tier employees.

That’s exactly how it is at my job, too. A Full Professor at my department makes exactly twice as much as I do. Our teaching load and research requirements are identical, there is no difference in the level of the courses we teach (everybody gets to teach at every level on an equal basis). I think it’s fair that people start with lower salaries and then get paid more the longer they work at a place. Right now, I’m honestly not worth the same salary to my place of employment as my senior colleagues. They invested more of themselves into our university, they understand it better, so they should be getting more.

I love feeling aggrieved and short-changed but here I simply don’t see why I should be.