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November 7, 1996

Senate leaders fear lack of input on faculty early retirement plan

While Pitt administrators and attorneys continue to work out details of a proposed new early retirement plan for full-time, tenured faculty, University Senate leaders complain that they've been left in the dark about the plan's progress.

"I don't know what interpretation to put on this," Senate benefits and welfare committee chairperson James Holland said at the Nov. 5 Faculty Assembly meeting. "The worst would be that the will for shared governance is lacking, but I wouldn't come to that conclusion yet. It could just be procrastination. We'll have to wait and see." Holland said he fears the administration will hand his committee a finished plan and then ask for comments. Faculty — and the plan itself — would have been better served if the Senate had been involved in the early stages of drafting the proposal, Holland said.

University Senate president Keith McDuffie said he will relay the Senate's frustrations to Provost James Maher prior to the Nov. 11 Senate Council meeting. McDuffie said he will ask Pitt administrators to give a brief update on the proposed plan at the Council meeting, and will ask the Provost's office to send a representative to the Dec. 3 Faculty Assembly meeting to report in detail about the plan.

At Tuesday's Assembly meeting, Holland quoted from a letter he said he'd received that day from Provost Maher, assuring the benefits and welfare committee that it will have the chance to comment on any proposed early retirement plan before it is implemented.

Robert Pack, vice provost for Academic Planning and Resources Management, told the University Times that a draft plan has been delayed by legal considerations, mainly questions about age discrimination. Since Jan. 1, 1994, federal law has forbidden mandatory retirement ages for faculty. A plan that offered financial incentives based solely or primarily on an employee's age could be interpreted as being discriminatory, Pack said.

The administration and Senate groups had hoped to have a plan in effect by the end of 1996, but Pack said that's unlikely. "I think we're looking at early in the spring semester at this point," he said.

The vice provost said the administration is considering a plan based on a minimum "magic number" that would be arrived at by adding the retiree's age and his or her years of service at Pitt. For example, if the magic number was 80, then a 60-year-old faculty member with 20 years of service would be eligible.

Senate leaders say they've heard repeatedly, but only from unofficial sources, that the magic number being considered for the Pitt plan is 90. Pack declined to comment on that rumor.

Whatever form the new plan takes, it will be based on the basic recommendations of a February 1996 report by the Faculty Retirement Policy Review Committee, Pack said. Then-Chancellor J. Dennis O'Connor appointed the faculty and administrator group in 1995 to make recommendations on University retirement policies.

The review committee did not offer details of a new plan, but made a number of general recommendations, including: * The University should continue its current policy of regularly contributing to employees' retirement annuity accounts.

* Pitt should continue to permit faculty nearing retirement to go on reduced workload at a reduced level of compensation. "To encourage a phase-in to retirement for those who wish it," the report added, "a new option should be made available to all tenured faculty in which the faculty member may negotiate a reduced workload for a specified number of years at the end of which the faculty member would retire and receive a separation bonus." * In addition to offering an early retirement incentive plan for full-time, tenured faculty, the University should consider similar plans for non-tenure stream faculty and staff.

Pack is the Provost's office liaison to the Senate on the early retirement plan. On Oct. 10, he met with the benefits and welfare committee to discuss progress on the plan. He was scheduled to discuss the plan's financial implications with the Senate budget policies committee on Nov. 1, but he did not attend the meeting. Pack told the University Times he was sick that day. BPC members said he did not send word that he would not be attending. His presentation had been the main agenda item.

Between 1982 and the end of 1993, when mandatory faculty retirement ages were outlawed, Pitt offered some form of early retirement plan to tenured faculty members who were at least 62 years old and had worked at Pitt for at least 10 years. A later, rewritten plan was offered to faculty who reached the ages of 62-70 between Sept. 1, 1994 and Jan. 3, 1996.

Like those earlier plans, the new one would give full-time, tenured faculty the option of retiring early and continuing to receive a portion of their salaries in subsequent years.

— Bruce Steele

Filed under: Feature,Volume 29 Issue 6

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