One more takes early retirement incentive
A week after informal notifications concerning layoffs were distributed around campus, only one more person has taken advantage of the early retirement incentive program.
Human Resources Senior Officer Maxine Kent said the numbers have not significantly changed since last Monday.
About 60 staff members received informal notices from their supervisors May 21 concerning the possibility of layoffs. Of those 60 positions, 33 are facing elimination and 27 are being reduced to part-time, Kent said.
Several union contracts allow employees with long-term service to “bump” into a vacancy or displace the least-senior employee in the same classification, Kent said. A person who has been bumped may then move to a lower pay level, and the process continues until the employee with the least amount of service at CMU and in the lowest pay level is laid off.
The “bumping” process only affects union employees. Only two non-union groups exist at CMU: professional and administrative employees — totaling 686 positions — and 37 senior officers.
June 9 is the tentative date for announcing formal layoff notices, and until that time, no one in CMU’s Public Relations and Marketing Office can comment on the specifics of which departments have received notices or how much funding those layoffs will secure for the university, said Rich Morrison, Public Relations and Marketing senior officer.
The early retirement incentive program has a deadline of June 13, and could impact the amount of layoffs, Kent said.
CMU is facing an estimated $9 million cut to higher education appropriations, per Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s recommendation. Coupled with an estimated $15 million of increased expenses in salaries, benefits and utilities, and the $3.6 million CMU cut earlier this year, a difference of $21.5 million exists between the revised budget for the current fiscal year and the initial budget proposal.
Morrison said members of the Public Relations and Marketing staff attended training sessions Human Resources provided for supervisors and people who may be affected.
“They said there was a lot of good, concrete, very useful information. This was a mandatory meeting for supervisors, and they came back and said was really great,” he said.
On July 10, the Board of Trustees is expected to approve the 2003-04 budget.
