While layoffs may be necessary to reduce spending during the UI’s budget crisis, contractual obligations may delay any savings from layoffs for months.
Because most staff contracts require months of advance notice for termination and the added cost of unemployment pay, permanent layoffs would not be a quick fix, said UI business Professor Gary Fethke, who also served as the UI’s interim president for a year.
“It’s not as if you can just cut people out,” he said. “There’s all kinds of complicated relationships and even if you do move to laying people off, it could take a long time before there are any cost savings.”
The potential layoffs are one of eight suggestions doled out by state Board of Regents President David Miles at their Oct. 14 special meeting. The three state institutions have until Oct. 29 to draw up their respective plans for dealing with budget cuts after Gov. Chet Culver’s 10 percent statewide reduction.
After a budget cut of $21.9 million in 2001, the UI left 107 positions unfilled and anticipated 158 more would be left empty by the end of that year, according to a winter issue of the UI’s Parent Times. But the 2001 cuts were $36 million less than this year’s, making the prospect of layoffs this time around more serious.
“I don’t think they’re going to be able to find ways of accommodating this [budget] without considering layoffs,” Fethke said.
The UI has $24.7 million to cut and President Sally Mason stated in an e-mail Oct. 14 that officials will work to “protect critical jobs.”
Staff with “career status” require six to 12 months’ notice and those with “probationary status” receive three months’ notice of a layoff, said Kevin Ward, UI executive associate director of Human Resources. Status is determined primarily by seniority, he said.
“The notice periods are a factor you have to take into account … in our planning in terms of the budget impact,” Ward said. “But there can be ways to deal with the [budget] and still be able to provide notice to the staff.”
More specific details concerning layoffs will be available after the Oct. 29 regents meeting, and Human Resources will work to help affected staff cope, Ward said.
“It would not be the sort of thing where the next day people walk in and are confronted with whether or not they’re losing their job,” Ward said. “We’re working with planning to do it the best way possible.”
Despite the fact that UI officials, including Mason, said they have tried to avoid layoffs, cutting positions is a serious cost-cutting consideration — a fact UI spokesman Tom Moore said they have been up-front about.
“I think the staff appreciates the honesty,” Moore said. “I think they know that every effort will be made to avoid [layoffs] but in the end it may not be possible.”
But terminating positions, although difficult, is more realistic than looking to save money in other areas such as maintenance, Fethke said.
“I don’t envy the people who have to make these decisions, but sometimes looking for short-term answers really causes the university long-term problems,” Fethke said. “But I wouldn’t just blindly go to the statements that we’re going to protect employment at all costs … because we are not an employment agency; it’s tough but it’s true.”
