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Thursday, February 11, 2010

Furloughs????

Still waiting on furloughs. Just a quick thought. If furloughs are expected next year, don't we have a budget process that should be used to avoid them?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

If we budget to avoid them, we lay more people off permanently.

Anonymous said...

Oh, anonymous 10:09, you are referring, then, to that shell game the administrators call a budget? In which they spend millions and vapory projects, while they cheat the College of Arts and Sciences of its earned revenues? Yeah, right.

anonymous and amused said...

I used to live near some people who had peacocks. They (the peacocks) would scream all the time...but it signified nothing. These noisy birds seemed very impressed with themselves, but were more of a nuisance than anything else. I see the parallel.

Rosemary should get a parrot.

Anonymous10:09 said...

Actually I'm a PSA employee who has a family to feed who doesn't want to lose her job. Given the choice between no job and a day off, I'm unclear why there's a debate. Unless you're guaranteed not to be fired I guess.

horns n' fins said...

Hi PSA -- Given the choice you lay out, of course anyone would prefer the time off. The debate is that shouldn't be the choice. There are many alternatives. BGSUs furlough plan only includes the highest paid personnel. UTs plan should not treat President and Provosts and Deans the same as those who can least afford the pay cut.

Anonymous said...

PSA:

Please remember this... none of us control the budget.

We are not the ones who gave the huge bonuses that Olson and AAUP were up in arms about. We are not the ones who gave the upper administration salary raises approaching 20%. We are not the ones who borrowed the money through bonds to increase the amount that the university has to pay for those debts. We are not the ones who gave millions of dollars to "UTIE" or the "new Alternative Energy School."


Yet we will be the ones asked to pay for these malfeasances.


You may lose your job with or without a furlough. But the furlough is a way for the administration to sound "fair" by asking all of us to pay a little.


It is not a solution but a problem: if one or two days will not cure their excesses, will 10 or 20 days be enough? Will a 100 new layoffs be enough? Who really knows when the adminstration controls the numbers?

The real solution is to stop their endless spending.

Anonymous10:09 said...

Horns and Fins,

I don't disagree and I don't have sympathy for administrators. Except they will ultimately make the decisions. And if faculty refuse to participate, then it will be PSA folks like me out of a job.

I'm not making a comment on whether it is fair or not fair. My point is that faculty have the ability to make these stands on principle because your job is not and won't be at stake. Perhaps faculty jobs are at stake over the long term as I know tenured positions are not being replaced as faculty leave, however my concerns are very much in the short term. My principles are my children having food to eat and a home to sleep in.

I would love to be able to fight the big battles with UT leaders, but my family is more important to me than those battles. You guys are able to fight those battles because of your status as faculty. But even though you're fighting on the side of the angels, if you don't take furloughs, I'm more likely to be out of a job than if you do.

And I'm sorry, but compared to my family's financial security, I'm not able to care about UT politics. Thanks for listening.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately UT politics have real world effects. The BOT and upper administration of this university are doing all they can to make the College of Arts and Sciences into a mass market feed lot style of institution. They will pack in warm bodies, slap a degree on the warm bodies, grab a whole lot of government and private money in the process that will then go to support favorite projects like the medical venture, and this they will do with as few people as possible on the College end. They will get rid of departments, professors, classes (going to distance learning formats and pre-packaged "modules") and PSA people too.

When administration is done with this college the result will make Owens C.C. look like Harvard in comparison.

Anonymous said...

PSA:

It is difficult to believe you are really a concerned professional worker at UT and not another hired UT marketing stooge pretending to fear on this blog in order to divide PSA professionals from AAUP professionals. Members of our hard-working and unappreciated UT non-administrative professional workforce (those represented by PSA, CWA, UTPPA and AAUP) have a common cause to promote at this time if they are to survive this administration’s inhumane restructuring plan with any sense of empowerment and dignity.

That common cause is to throw off the yokes of our carpetbagger taskmasters who under the diabolical strategic planning of The Jacobs Kleptocracy now deliberately attempt to bring our once-proud and unified University of Toledo workforce to its knees.

Their reason is to enhance revenue. They could care less about the human condition. Here is what we in the Arts & Sciences College can do as a cooperative and aggrieved workforce at this time. In anticipation of impending accreditation visits we can use the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Great Colleges to Work For” survey to our advantage and empowerment. Read about it here:

http://chroniclegreatcolleges.com/

If you are one of the “randomly” selected members of the UT workforce invited to respond to the survey, please take the time to elaborate on the climate of fear and foreboding that now prevails among PSA, CWA and AAUP workers at the University of Toledo.

You might specifically comment about how the low morale of PSA, CWA and AAUP members derives directly and indirectly from the aggressive implementation of Jacobs’ “Directions” strategic planning. Perhaps articulate clearly in your responses to the survey how our Board of Trustees and the Jacobs administrative team have deliberately distorted the intended purpose of our state public university of higher education while padding their own pockets.

Or, mention the injustice of the notorious “furlough” plan as an example of a sick, slick maneuver that positions the Administration to control instead of empower the productive efforts of the UT workforce. For example, our work force is immobilized by paperwork at the moment. Those administrators who impose this paperwork are the ones will get the raises and rewards.

Maybe mention how the low morale of UT workers contributes to low morale of students, who cannot but be negatively impacted by the current malaise of unethical behavior of administrative leadership at UT.

Finally, relate how UT pursues new student markets aggressively by developing new programs and devaluing the quality of its degrees more in the hope of revenue enhancement than from any deeper conviction about how the contribution of these programs might promote a future workforce of Ohio-educated Americans imbued with a passion for academic excellence and civic responsibility.