Glover rejects alternative to lay-offs

Dear Colleague,

As many of you will know, last week the Faculty Council and the Finance Committee of CLAS offered Interim Dean Glover an alternative to his plan for meeting the 6% cut imposed on the College by President Machen. They recommended using savings from the DROP program instead of laying off tenure-track faculty. Unfortunately, Interim Dean Glover rejected this recommendation (as well other recommendations pertaining to department mergers and program eliminations).

Here is the recommendation:

"The retirements from DROP in 2009-2010 should be used to remove the remaining four tenure-track faculty from the layoff list. Because resignations, including those taking place in the academic year 2009-2010, have been used to cover part of the reductions in the already approved plan, the three 2009-2010 DROP retirements of faculty in CLAS (one each in the Dean's Office, History, and English) make it possible to remove the four remaining tenure-track faculty from the layoff list. These retirements yield approximately $268,800 in recurring funds (not including fringe), and the total of the salaries of the four tenure-track faculty still on the layoff list is approximately $216,261 (not including fringe)."

Here is the response:

"I do not plan to implement this recommendation for several reasons, including (i) this would further mortgage the future of the college and stretch an unreasonably strained budget, (ii) this strategy would shift faculty deficits randomly to other units, and (iii) the college relies on some of the retirements for the pool of funds needed to pay sick and annual leave payouts."

Even if the 6% cut is truly necessary, the reasons given by Interim Dean Glover for rejecting the Faculty Council's alternative to his cuts are transparently disingenuous. How could foregoing some future appointments be worse for CLAS and the university than laying off the productive and loyal faculty it already has? How would using the funds freed up by retirements "stretch an unreasonably strained budget"? Why is the distribution of pending retirements said to be more random than that of junior faculty most vulnerable to lay-off? Is it because some other principle was used in selecting the targets? If so, we would be very interested in learning what that principle was. Would the savings from the three retirements in question be eaten up by the payouts alluded to? How? Not by the payouts required for those retirements. By those required for other retirements? Then, what about the savings from these?

There are two main lessons to be drawn:

§ First, the Union's oft-expressed skepticism has been well-grounded: The administration's claim that the only reason for lay-offs is financial does not stand up to scrutiny. It should now be plain that the administration's decisions are motivated by other, non-financial, considerations. The Union will continue its efforts to learn what these are and reveal them, both to the university community and the public.

§ Second, the administration's professed commitment to shared governance must be called into question. The summary rejection of this and other constructive recommendations by elected CLAS faculty bodies suggests a different attitude. We hope that the faculty at large will support our efforts to make true shared governance a reality at UF.

When President Machen announced his Budget Reduction Proposal, we wrote the following:

"The Union understands that UF faces major reductions in state funding. However, we see three main problems with President Machen's Budget Reduction Proposal:

· It assumes the University has no other resources for addressing the funding reductions, despite available evidence to the contrary.

· It offers no explicit rationale for the specific budget cuts proposed in it.

· It reflects inadequate consultation with faculty, thus violating the spirit of shared governance."

We believe these claims are still valid and have been born out by subsequent events.