Coffee heat rising

Workplace issues

Layoff Poker: Will the bosses tip their hand?

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Here’s a development: The brand-new director of our sister program, who hasn’t a clue but who does have a six-figure salary and commensurate clout, e-mailed to ask what our office could provide by way of assistantships or internships for her graduate students. What openings, she inquired, would be available over the summer and next fall?

{cackle!}

Well, o’course the answer to that is Heaven only knows, ’cause no one on this earthly plane does. But the realpolitick response was what a choice opportunity!

So naturally (oh, so naturally), I forwarded her query to Her Deanship with a disingenuous inquiry of my own: If all three of our research assistants stay through the summer and one stays on in the fall, may we hire two new RAs in the fall? If not, may we hire one new RA in the fall?

I love it! This foists the untoward question onto the new kid. And, well…New Kid being who and what she is, such a question coming from her pretty much demands an answer. It’s even within the realm of possibility (just within it) that she could command a straight answer. More or less.

E-mail forwarded to Deanship under a cover note, I rare back and watch.

Pretty quick, along comes a fine nonanswer: “I’ll check.”

This means Her Deanship will confer with her boss, His Vicepresidentship. One of three answers will issue forth. Here’s what they are, and here’s what they mean:

“We don’t know” (possibly phrased as “that decision has yet to be made” or “we’re still trying to figure it out”): This means “Don’t hire anyone, because you ain’t likely to be here much longer.”

“We can’t keep the present RAs over the summer but will (or probably will) hire one or two new RAs in the fall”: That one translates to “we are flat broke and we hope the students to whom we committed ourselves for 12-month contracts are not the litigious type; however, we expect your office will be in business after federal funds start to come in. Assuming any such funds do in fact materialize.”

“We will commit unequivocally to hiring new RAs in the fall”: This unlikely response will mean “your office assuredly will continue to exist despite the layoffs.”

Now. None of these means that the office necessarily will continue in business with me in charge of it. There is, after all, a classified position of managing editor, for which any number of graduates of our sister program would be eminently qualified. Starting salary for such a being: about half of what I earn. However, given the nature of institutional inertia, it’s probable that as long as the office survives, my job will survive.

Heh heh heh heh heh… Watch this space!

Should I apply for unemployment?

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The Great Desert University has been approved for an unemployment insurance program called Shared Work. Basically it means that furloughed employees can collect unemployment for the unpaid furlough days we’re being forced to take off.

On the surface, it looks like a good idea. But there are some potential drawbacks.

First, unemployment eligibility has been extended to 59 weeks, which is about 14 months. That’s good. Because…this Shared Work program uses up your unemployment eligibility. Between now and June 30, we’re required to take 12 days—that’s 2 1/2 weeks. There’s no guarantee that GDU will not continue this furlough business into the next fiscal year; in fact, most of us think it will be used to engineer a permanent pay cut. If you use up your unemployment one day at a time, by the time you really need it to buy groceries, you could find yourself with little or no unemployment money left.

Many more layoffs are coming. First you get the furlough, then you get canned. It may be better to defer unemployment for the time when you really are unemployed.

Too, this looks like a huge hassle. To get regular unemployment, you can apply online. In Arizona, the Shared Work Program requires you to fill out a hard-copy form and physically file it. And since no one knows when you’re likely to quit or be laid off, it’s logical to think that you couldn’t apply for a whole chunk of projected furlough days. Likely you have to fill out and hand-deliver a form for each and every day.

The amount of weekly unemployment I would get under the best of circumstances is tiny. If and when I’m canned, I’ll need every penny I can scrounge up. If in fact you have to fill out and deliver a hard-copy form every week that you’re furloughed, it may not be worth the hassle to collect the minuscule amount I would get for one furlough day, and, since my position is nontenurable and very much at risk, it may be a bad idea to jump the gun on collecting unemployment.

Should I grab the money and run, taking a chance that I will not be laid off? Or wait and see?

And did I mention we were through the looking glass?

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Funny to functionary in business office, re: furloughs:

SK [Sidekick] and I would like to ensure that each of us takes our furlough days on different days of the week, to be sure someone who is not a grad student is in place at [Our Spectacular Office] at all times. To accomplish that, here’s the plan I would like to suggest:

I take each payday between now & the end of the current FY as the furlough day. This is 11 days. I will need to see how much one of these things actually reduces my take-home pay before deciding when to take the 12th day, as I will have to figure out where the survival money will come from. This will probably happen while the weather is still cool enough that we don’t have huge air-conditioning bills.

SK may then take the Thursday of payday week off, if she would like, or any other day in each pay period. Similarly, SK will need to figure out how she will make ends meet before deciding on a 12th day.

The only question we have about this is the effect the lagging pay policy would have on using the payday itself as the furlough day. As far as I can figure, there are 11 paydays between now and June 30, because the July 2 payday actually covers a period that ends in June. Is that correct?

I hope this strategy is acceptable to the Dean’s Office. If there’s any problem with it, please alert me so we can adjust accordingly.

Functionary to Funny, re: furloughs:

There are actually 12 pay periods in the furlough time. It began this week. You will be able to figure out approximately how much it will reduce your take home pay if you take 10% of your pay and subtract it from the total pay. (one day of each pay period is 1 out of 10 days or 10%) If you and SK, start this week, then you have 12 pay periods and you will not have to have any check with 2 days missing. Does that make sense?

Thank you for being conscious of the fact that it is important we have coverage in your office at all times. The College appreciates that.

Heh heh heh heh heh heh…you betcha!

You understand: We get paid on July 2, a day earlier than normal because July 3, a holiday, falls on our usual payday. We have what is known as “lagging pay,” meaning our paychecks cover periods of varying distance in the past. No one who is human has been able to figure out a rationale for this system, which makes exactly zero sense.

M’hijito once explained lagging pay to me, pointing out that, among other benefits for the employer, it amounts to a way to short you for paid vacation time at the time you leave a company’s employ. It was all over my head, so I didn’t understand a word of what he said. But I’m quite certain that whatever its effects, they’re not in the worker’s interest.

Last year our mid-July paycheck was issued on July 18 and covered June 30. That would suggest this year’s scheduled July 17 check will also claim to cover days in the prior fiscal year.

What this means is that even though the furloughing is supposed to stop at the end of the fiscal year (June 30), we still get our pay docked in not one but TWO paychecks in the following month.

Meanwhile, we still have only eleven pay periods of days (22 weeks) that we will work in the current fiscal year. If we take a day off between July 1 and July 17, we’re taking it off in the next fiscal year. The only way we can squeeze 12 furlough days into eleven pay periods is to take two days in one pay period.

Actually, you’re allowed to take part days. So you could, in theory, divide one day in four and take 1.25 days off in four pay periods.

Isn’t that cute?

caterpillar

Illustration from Alice in Wonderland by John Tenniel

Furloughed! Parboil the fruits before canning?

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Well, I found out about it from NPR news first, while driving home through the interminable rush-hour traffic: every Great Desert University employee is to be furloughed between now and the end of the fiscal year, June 30. When I raced in the house and pulled up my e-mail, yea verily, there was a message from Our Beloved President, outlining the plan to balance the university’s budget on its employees’ backs.

Administrators are being zapped for 15 days—that’s three weekswith no pay! Classified staff, which would include my associate editor, who earns less than she was earning as a graduate research assistant, get off with a mere ten days. And everyone else—that would be moi—will face 12 no-pay days.

Apparently we’re being allowed to string it out over the rest of the fiscal year; 17 1/2 weeks. The particular configuration of the furloughs, though, depends on one’s supervisor’s whim. So, for me, if they allow me to to take off one day a week, that would cut my pay by two days for each paycheck—$480—between now and the end of the fiscal year. Assuming, of course, that I last for the rest of the fiscal year.

Think of that: a $480 pay cut. Thank you so much, Georgie Porgie and all your doctrinaire ideologue puppeteers!

We can, we’re told, claim unemployment insurance for the unpaid days. Unemployment in Arizona is pretty piddling—a tiny fraction of what you earn. And it’s such a hassle to claim it that if you have any other source of income to fall back on, it’s hardly worth bothering.

Our bread-and-butter client just e-mailed asking if we’ll take on not one but two new projects. You betcha, sister!

Monkeywrench lands in layoff plan

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OMG. If the possible-probable-maybe-definitely layoffs weren’t bad enough, here comes a new curve. La Maya discovered that the famous sick leave payoff we’re supposed to get disappears if you’re laid off. You get it only if you retire.

Yes. If they decide to can you, they give you an extra kick in the shins by taking away the benefit tied to the hundreds of hours of sick leave most of us have accrued—in my case, it’s over 1,100 hours, worth more than $17,500. That is tens of thousands of dollars more than the piddling unemployment insurance Arizona pays its workers. And it’s money I planned into my financial strategy for layoff. For that matter, even if I weren’t laid off, it’s money planned into my retirement finances.

There are only two ways to hang on to this fund in the face of a likely layoff:
1. Retire right now.
2. Declare that I will retire in the near future and then hope, if I don’t get laid off, that the dean will allow me to push the retirement date back a few months.

If you state that you are going to retire (says HR—who knows how accurate this is!) and the university then lays you off or otherwise cans you, the state still has to pay the benefit.

So, if I formally announced that I intend to retire just before my contract runs out, I could lay claim to something in excess of $17,600. And if I can engineer it with the dean’s office, when “retirement” time draws nigh, I “decide” that I’ve changed my mind and push it back another three months. This could, in theory, get me through the crisis: if I’m laid off, I walk with all my benefits; if I’m not, I still have the job that I need to hang onto until I reach age 70.

The risks, of course, are painfully obvious.

Darn! Not canned, after all

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LOL! Is this the promised threatened layoff?

Memo
To: GDU Faculty and Staff
From: Powers That Be

The PeopleSoft system currently shows most employees as system terminated. This is a system problem, and it terminated them in error. This is obviously a priority today, and all IT folks are working on it. They will hopefully have this fixed this afternoon, and HR will give us an update when they get it. Please let Oliver Boxankle in HR know if you have any other questions about this.

Hee heeeee! When they said “we’re laying off everyone in a specific job classification,” they weren’t kidding. That would be EVERYONE. Wouldn’t want to miss any outliers.

Alas, as of this morning the system is fixed. So, I suppose they think we should be working now.

The wonders of outsourcing.
😆