Friday, October 23, 2026
By CHUCK STARESINIC
The big news from Pitt’s Town Hall webinar on Oct. 21 was the announcement that the University is offering an incentivized early retirement program to eligible faculty and staff with the goal of bringing expenses back in line with revenue through the coming years.
To be eligible for the Voluntary Early Retirement Program (VERP), a Pitt employee must be at least 57 years old on May 14, 2027, and have 10 years of consecutive service. The offer includes a lump-sum payment of half of one’s annual salary and extension of health and education benefits (including those of spouses and dependent children) until the retiree turns 65. More detailed information can be found in a FAQ from Pitt’s Office of Human Resources.
The last time such an offer was extended was in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pitt offered separate voluntary retirement programs to faculty age 65 and older and staff age 59 and older. Both packages came with immediate access to retiree benefits, including medical coverage for spouses and dependent children. Participation differed sharply; fewer than a quarter of faculty members chose to accept, while more than half of eligible staff members chose early retirement.
Making the case
Chancellor Joan Gabel began the Town Hall by summarizing several of Pitt’s strengths and most recent bragging points highlighted in her 2025-26 Annual Report, but then added, “It is very important also for us to address and be very transparent and open about our challenges and our headwinds, and they are real. They are very real.”
To that end, Gabel said, “Dwayne Pinkney will go through the budget in detail, including some proactive steps we're taking. Most specifically, you'll hear about an incentivized retirement plan that many of you have been asking when it was going to come.”
Pinkney, executive senior vice chancellor and chief financial officer, said, “Over the past several years, the University's expenses have consistently grown at a faster rate than its revenue. We anticipate that this trend will continue, and if we do nothing, the gap will continue to widen.”
“To manage this challenge, we have required budget reallocations across the University during both the last fiscal year and for the current fiscal year. Every major area of the University has participated, with the goal of identifying recurring savings of approximately 5% of the budget each year. While overall expenses continue to increase due to inflation and other cost pressures, these actions have helped to slow the rate of expense growth, but we need to do more.
“So, looking ahead, we expect a similar gap in the fiscal year that begins on July 1 of next year, and we expect that trend to continue into the future,” Pinkney noted. “This means we face the risk of a structural deficit, which means it will not close on its own. Closing it will take revenue growth, reduction in expenses and/or both.”
In fiscal year 2026, revenue and expenses were dead even, he explained. This year, Pitt is projected to spend slightly more than it takes in. By fiscal year 2030, that shortfall grows to 2.6 percent of the budget.
“Now that may not sound like a lot, but on a $3.2-billion budget, it is, and we need to manage it,” he said. “That's why we are choosing to act now, so that we can continue to deliver on the mission and vision of this great university, …
“To be straightforward about finances, this voluntary early retirement program requires an investment upfront, because we will be providing retirement packages to colleagues who choose this path,” he added. “However, over time, we expect savings.”
How VERP works
When announced, the program was described as being offered only to non-represented employees, and Vice Chancellor for Human Resources James Gallaher addressed this during the presentation.
“For our union-represented employees, the University is proposing to the respective unions an agreement or an MOU on the voluntary early retirement program,” he said. “Because the respective unions are the exclusive bargaining representative of the employees they represent, we will be discussing the proposed VERP directly with the unions and not with the represented employees attending the town hall today.”
In a statement to the University Times, Bernie Hall, District 10 director for the United Steelworkers (USW), which represents both faculty and staff unions at Pitt, said, “Our union was not given advanced notice regarding the early retirement program and first heard about it at the same time as all other Pitt employees: in the chancellor’s town hall.
“After the town hall, the administration approached the USW regarding opening the program to union-represented staff and faculty,” Hall continued. “We are now reviewing the proposal they provided us to ensure our members’ interests are protected as we quickly move to work out the details of participation with the administration.”
Gallaher added, “Our discussion today on the VERP is not intended in any way to replace or interfere with ongoing collective bargaining and negotiations between the University and the unions. We do, however, look forward to the discussion of the VERP with the unions and hope to reach an agreement with them fairly soon.”
The day after the announcement, Tyler Bickford, professor of English and president of the Pitt faculty union, said, “We were in bargaining yesterday and the administration presented their MOU proposal during the bargaining session. We quickly reviewed it and responded with a counterproposal. So, we’re moving quickly. I don’t see a reason why the whole process can’t be resolved soon.”
In a statement that anticipates the potential effects of a significant number of retirements, Pitt’s Staff Council urged University leadership “to give sustained and deliberate attention to the work left behind and its consequences for staff morale.”
After the most recent incentivized retirement program took effect in 2021, “remaining staff were left to absorb additional responsibilities, which led to burnout and attrition,” the statement said, adding it was imperative to “prioritize workloads in alignment with the priorities outlined in the Plan for Pitt, making clear decisions about what continues, what changes and what can be paused, so that job creep does not fall on those remaining employees when roles are not backfilled.”
Gallaher offered a tentative timeline for implementing the VERP: All eligible employees will receive an enrollment packet via email in November, he said, which they must either accept or decline by January 2027. He described the retirement dates for employees who accept the offer as “not negotiable.” They are April 30 for those faculty members on eight-month contracts, May 14 for staff and May 15 for all other faculty members.
One exception for staff is that eligible Falk School staff members would retire at the end of the school year in June, the same month all incentive payments will be made.
In addition to the VERP announcement, the town hall included remarks by Senior Vice Chancellor for Research Rob Rutenbar, Senior Vice Chancellor for External Relations Kevin Washo, Provost Joe McCarthy and Senior Vice Chancellor and Chief Legal Officer Geovette Washington.
Chuck Staresinic is interim editor of the University Times. Reach him at chuck.s@pitt.edu.
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