Council Asks for Decisions on Furloughs, Retirement Incentive, to Address Budget Issues

Two recommendations on how to protect the jobs of Professional and Scientific staff at Iowa State University in the current state budget crisis were adopted by the P&S Council at a special session Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 13.

The Council voted 38-4 to ask the university to allow departments to use employee furloughs as a budget alternative to layoffs. A separate motion, asking that a decision be announced soon on whether a Retirement Incentive Option will be offered in 2010, passed by a vote of 39-0. The text of the motions is available on the Council's Docket Page.

Council President Camille Sloan Schroeder said the special session was convened to give Council members an opportunity to recommend measures that will reduce layoffs. The Iowa Board of Regents scheduled a teleconference for Oct. 14 to discuss the 10 percent across-the-board state funding cut announced by Gov. Chet Culver last week, and Schroder said it was important for the Council to go on record before that meeting with recommendations to save jobs.

Nearly 50 Council constituents attended Tuesday’s meeting held in 206 Durham Hall at 3:30 p.m. The Council has 38 members elected on behalf of 2,700 university P&S staff in six representation areas, and six officers. Also attending were Brenda Behling, assistant to the Executive Vice President and Provost, and Ellen Rasmussen, Associate Vice President for Budget and Planning. Schroeder said she received more than 150 e-mail messages through the Council’s feedback web site and directly from constituents reacting to the proposed motions.

The motions were drafted by the Council’s Executive Committee last Friday and the decision made to convene a special session of the Council. The motion to Allow Furloughs for P&S Staff for FY 10 Budget Reversions was introduced by Kevin Kane, the Council’s vice president for university planning and budget and a former two-term president of the Council. The motion recommending a Retirement Incentive Option for Calendar Year 2010 was introduced by Trevor Riedemann, co-chair of the Council’s Compensation and Benefits Committee and a representative for IPRT/Ames Lab staff.

Kane said the intent of the furlough recommendation was to allow furloughs as one of many tools departments and administrative units can use in making budget reduction decisions. He said the motion applies only to the P&S staff represented by the Council and is not intended as a recommendation for faculty or merit staff. A voluntary leave without pay option was offered earlier this year to all university staff, but Kane said he envisions a program for P&S staff that would allow more flexibility.

Kane said a deliberate decision was made not to include details in the motion on how a furlough plan should be implemented, because he expects that to come from the budget planning process. He also noted that P&S Council members and staff have many opportunities for planning input.

The motion on the Retirement Incentive Option asked for an early decision on whether a program will be offered in 2010 so that individuals and departments can begin making plans soon. The program announced last April for 2009 was offered to University employees who were 60 or older and had 10 years or more of employment. Applications to participate in the program were required by June 30, 2009, with retirement no later than Jan. 31, 2010, and departments were allowed to turn down applicants if no cost savings would result.


Background Statement

Read by Kevin Kane when the Motion to Allow Furloughs was introduced

During the Spring of 2009 when the FY09 state appropriations budget cut was facing the university, the ISU P&S Council surveyed its constituents for their thoughts and opinions on the budget and how it might affect them. One of the findings of the survey was that 60 percent of our P&S staff agreed that furloughs were preferable to layoffs (1).

After reductions were made, two of the most asked questions to Council and unit managers were "why weren't furloughs used" and "were furloughs considered" which was usually answered by managers with "furloughs were not an option given to us." The Council heard several reasons for furloughs not being used including "being too complicated to implement in the merit system," "faculty are only paid when on campus and furloughs would negatively affect teaching and thus our students," and "different funding sources make furloughs unmanageable." With a general guide to treat employee groups similarly, it seems these complications took the use of furloughs as a budgetary tool off the table for everyone, including P&S staff.

The intent of this motion is to request, and recommend, that furloughs again be considered as tool for budget reductions for P&S staff, even if complications preclude their use for faculty and merit staff. The council understands that furloughs are only one of the tools, including Retirement Incentive Options, salary donation to the ISU Foundation, pay cuts, benefit reductions, and layoffs that may be used to trim budgets. However, the council feels that having a furlough option for unit managers use will enable ISU units to act quickly and efficiently to this particular across the board cut, keeping our staff employed during this recession where they are already working hard to compensate from previous budget cuts. In addition, the availability of furloughs as a tool will help retain institutional knowledge and experience, and position the university to avoid hiring and training new staff if and when funding levels rebound.

The Council acknowledges that this deep of a budget cut does not lend itself to a "one size fits all solution" and that layoffs in some areas might be inevitable. However, the availability of furloughs as a tool, voluntary or mandatory, could give some unit managers a viable alternative for an across the board cut where there is little time to form priorities for program and employee cuts.

(1) Spring 2009 P&S Employee Survey 59.9% agreed or strongly agreed (19.1% were neutral and 19.9% disagreed or strongly disagreed) when asked for their opinion on the statement "Mandatory furloughs are preferable to eliminating positions."


The 2009 plan offered to pay retirees’ premiums for university health care plans for five years. Behling said it is unlikely that any additional benefit would be offered in a plan in 2010, but the window of eligibility might be changed to allow more people to qualify. About 100 P&S staff accepted the 2009 retirement incentive. That number included about 65 Extension professionals, following elimination of 93 positions in Extension county and area offices. University officials had said before the 10 percent statewide cut was announced that another 73 staff positions are likely to be eliminated because of budget issues.

[Reported by Del Marks, P&S representative for Extension staff and member of the P&S Communication Committee]

Also see Inside Iowa State report on this meeting.