About 60 staff members will receive informal notices from their supervisors today concerning the possibility of layoffs, but university officials won’t say which departments will be affected.

Of those 60 positions, 33 are facing elimination and 27 are being reduced to part-time, said Maxine Kent, Human Resources associate vice president.

“The decision to eliminate positions is never easy,” said University President Michael Rao. “There’s nothing more difficult or painful than laying off employees and colleagues. CMU has planned a number of transition services to assist individuals whose positions are eliminated.”

Rao said the university will limit the layoffs limited to staff members.

“I’ve made a commitment, and have since I’ve arrived, to slowly and steadily increase the number of regular faculty positions to keep up with the growth the university experienced in the 1990s,” he said. “I’m not going to counteract that now. I expect in the fall there will be 100 more faculty than when I arrived.”

Departments where the eliminations or reductions would take place are unknown at this time, said Mike Silverthorn, Public Relations and Marketing executive director of news services.

“We have to start the process, and there is a sequence for everything to happen. Depending on the informal notices given there may be retirements, some people may take advantage of the incentive program and the bumping process also begins,” he said. “We can’t say which positions will be eliminated until we get to the formal stage.”

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.

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.

June 9 is the tentative date for announcing formal layoff notices, giving people at least 30 days notice, 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.

A dollar amount of how much the layoffs and reductions would save is not known, Silverthorn said. The early retirement incentive program has a deadline of June 13, and could be impactful in terms of reducing the amount of layoffs.

Kent said the early retirement incentive plan will have the biggest impact on the number of layoffs.

“The first thing is determining the number of vacancies and plug that into the equation. We have to then talk to the people being reduced from full time, and see if they want to accept the reduction or go through layoff process,” she said. “We’ll give them some time to think about it. It’s never very easy, but the process could take anywhere from three to seven days.”

As of Monday, 38 people have taken advantage of the early incentives program, Kent said.

On July 10, the Board of Trustees is expected to approve the 2003-04 budget.