Furlough plan ready ‘if needed’

The University of Toledo has proposed a new budget-driven furlough plan that will include all eligible employees and will save UT around $1 million a day if the plan is implemented.

Unlike UT’s previous plan, which was supposed to be utilized over winter break, the number of days each employee will have to take off will be determined by how much money the university needs to save rather than an individual’s income level.

UT President Lloyd Jacobs said the furlough plan is a way of “sharing the pain.”

“This way, we all have the pain,” he said. “Layoffs concentrate the pain in certain areas. It’s a matter of do we want to share the pain and what degree we want to share it in.”

Jacobs said everyone will have to take a furlough day regardless of income level, including him and the custodians.

“This includes every eligible employee, from the frontline employees to the top of the house including [Jacobs],” said Vice President of Human Resources and Campus Safety Bill Logie, who served on the Furlough Committee.

Under the new furlough plan, nine-month faculty will have to take a furlough day during the nine month pay period and part-time employees will have furlough days based on an equivalent number of work days to full-time employees.

“For full-time employees, if they are asked for example to take two furlough days, then part-time employees will be asked to take one furlough day,” Logie said. “That’s to be fair and equitable. It wouldn’t be fair to say to somebody, if you work one day a week, you’ve got to take five days.”

But some faculty members do not think lower paid employees should have to “share the pain” of furlough days.

“It should be weighted based on where the income level is,” said Andy Jorgensen, associate professor of chemistry. “That one day means so much more for modest level income employees. If there does need to be a furlough, they surely should make a distinction on what people’s incomes are.”

Erik Johansen, associate professor of music, said it is unfair to make employees who make less than $50,000 a year take a furlough day because the way they utilize their income may be more crucial in their day-to-day lives.

“I don’t see that we’re all equal in this,” Johansen said. “I don’t think any of the upper administration have lived on the edge of the income like some of the custodians and police officers. What happens if you can’t make your house payment one month because you’re taking a furlough, which could happen for those lower-level income staff members?”

Though some faculty members think the furlough plan is unfair to lower-level income employees, Jacobs said furloughs are the best way to save money quickly if the university needs to.

“Once you lay someone off, it’s a permanent reduction of cost; but if you just need one-time money, furloughs are your best bet,” Jacobs said. “Now if you need to save money over an extended period of time, layoffs are probably a little better.”

Lawrence Anderson-Huang, professor and director of astronomy, said though furloughs are a better option than layoffs, furloughs should be the last possible plan utilized to cut costs at UT.

“I certainly do think furloughs are better than terminations, but it seems to be highly unlikely that there aren’t other ways to cut the budget,” he said. “They should look very carefully at the number of administrative positions at the level of vice presidents and individual people and send the individual people back into the faculty where they came from. We could reduce them so that the salary pool is less.”

Faculty and staff on the Health Science Campus will also have to take furlough days, but Jacobs said their days will be staggered.

“There are many places where there is 24-hour requirement: heating plants, steam plants, maintenance, police people and including those at the UT Medical Center,” Jacobs said. “It’s more complex for those people and, in all of those areas, we will stager those furlough days, but everybody will take their furlough days as appropriate in the category of the need.”

Health Science Campus Provost Jeff Gold said furloughing does not work with healthcare service and they will have to find a way to get the equivalent amount of dollars from HSC staff.

“One option we’ve given the managers is, if you can’t furlough the person because they’re the man who runs the heart-lung machine, he may be doing heart-lung issues everyday so instead of taking a day from him, you take a day’s pay.” Logie said.

According to Logie, “taking a day’s pay” is more in the context of employees having unpaid holidays.

“I can’t furlough a police officer, so I’m going to have to find a way to get the same equivalent money from them,” Logie said. “But we can’t not have a police officer on campus, so we just would have to do it in a different way, equivalently.”

Jacobs said the furlough plan is about UT’s ability to react quickly to a budget shortfall, but Gold said an actual furlough day at the UTMC is not possible.

“The principal is that if we’re going to do a furlough-like program, it’s going to cover all aspects of the university so we in the Medical Center will be a responsive to that as well,” Gold said. “They can’t have a furlough day at the Medical Center. When I say furlough, I’ve been very careful to use it in quotes or furlough-like. That’s not what we’re aiming for in the Medical Center and we can’t do it. It is an all-healthcare delivery and we need to be here for our patients, for safety reasons, all patient reasons.”

Gold said one option for hospital staff is to give up their premium pay during holidays.

Jacobs said the original furlough plan, which was going to be implemented during winter break, was called off because there wasn’t a financial need for it.