we endorse highly visible campus closure during periods of instruction to achieve significant portions of our allocated furloughs as both recognition of our current fiscal emergency, and as the most fiscally responsible means for achieving cost savings to the campus.There are currently debates among faculty on most campuses about how the furloughs might best be implemented, and I will post more news on this as I receive it.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
UC Santa Cruz Senate Endorses Furloughs during instruction
UCSC's Senate Executive Committee (SEC) has written a memo on Furlough Plan Implementation. It identifies 10 "common" furlough days to be taken during the academic year. Noing that President Yudof has delegated furlough implementation to the campuses, Santa Cruz's SEC states that,
This is an excellent model that I hope will be adopted by other campuses, including my own (UCSB).
ReplyDeleteOne conundrum that the UCSC memo clearly identifies is the differences in the number of furlough days for faculty earning different salaries. Would it be advisable and feasible to combine this model with a demand/call for "time equity" in furloughs, at least for the professoriate--those who do the teaching.
Here is my thinking on this matter:
COORDINATED AND TIME-EQUITABLE FURLOUGHS: Everyone is furloughed for the same number of
days (despite the sliding scale of wage cuts), everyone is furloughed on the same days,
and university work (aside from some essential services like health care) stops during
furloughs. Some furlough days can be used for teach-ins and demonstrations.
How?
The total days of furlough for the entire campus be added up and divided by the total
number of furloughed people and everyone gets the same amount of furlough days. Some
people (lower wage categories) would be furloughed more days than that which is
designated by their pay cut but with no additional impact on their pay beyond the
authorized cut. Conversely, other people (higher wage categories) would be furloughed
less days than that which is designated by their pay cut.
Why?
Two positive reasons: 1) promotes campus unity and equity, and 2) makes the impact of
this cutting-and-gutting strategy visible.
There are other reasons why this might be appealing to the campus administrations which
are not "positive," but not necessarily "negative" for our purposes either: it would be
easier to administer for dept chairs and other types of supervisors, and it would
(maybe?) minimize departmental resentments that arise from a sliding scale of time.
We have been discussing the campus shutdown idea on my CSU campus. As we would all be furloughed two days a month (assuming the faculty vote approves furloughs next week), these shut-downs would rotate through the week so the burden would fall evenly on all classes. Many of us like this idea as it would be highly visible and recognize that teaching is just one component of our job, along with service and scholarship.
ReplyDeleteSome here have warned that reducing instructional hours might create a WASC accreditation problem. It apparently also would violate mandates for instructional hours set in the Title 5 education code.
Thoughts on these issues from other campuses (especially UC campuses) would be very welcome here.
From a UC Irvine employee:
ReplyDeleteI hope all UC's (including mine) follow UCSC's example - it's a great idea and save the campus even more than human resources (utilities, etc); this is an unfortunate situation for all, but we ought to maximize it's impact across the board.