Dear University of Oregon community, As many of you are no doubt aware, Gov. Kate Brown this morning approved Lane County’s plan to allow some local businesses to start operating as early as tomorrow through a controlled and phased reopening strategy. The county moving into a Phase 1 reopening stance is…
Posts tagged as “Coronavirus”
Apparently SRS consultants are on campus now, measuring classrooms to determine how many students they can hold in 6′ bubbles. This must have been pretty expensive: And pretty useless, according to this work by UO’s Institute for Health in the Built Environment, which takes account of air-flow:
5/6/2020 update:
The latest email from HR is here. It gives the faculty a 6 day extension on the demand for requests for remote teaching. I clicked on the Remote Work Request Form link in the email. I was surprised to learn that there’s a university policy requiring all employees to demonstrate honesty in communication & conduct. I guess there’s an exemption for JH administrators.
In any case I’ve got a fifth of Laphroaig for whoever submits the best reason in the comments for wanting to work remotely. In keeping with UO policy, all entries must start with “Honestly, ”
5/5/2020: HR gives faculty til Friday to get BMI up to 40 & request opt-out from in-person teaching
A letter to campus from one of our our Italian correspondents. Page down for her op-ed in today’s Oregonian: From: Melissa Graboyes <[email protected]> Subject: UO Fall Term Planning–Concerns about the Safety of In-Person and On-Campus Instruction Date: May 6, 2020 at 6:54:09 AM PDT To: Andre Le Duc <[email protected]> Cc:…
ACADEMIC COUNCIL: UPDATED ACADEMIC CONTINUITY EXPECTATIONS The Academic Council met 4-22-20 to discuss academic continuity planning for the duration of the COVID-19 disruption. The Academic Continuity Plan approved by the Academic Council on March 4, 2020 (https://senate.uoregon.edu/2020/03/05/academic-continuity-plan-for-the-coronavirus-health-emergency/) remains in effect until the academic disruption is declared over by the Academic…
From Around the 0, of course: University of Oregon students, faculty members and staff are invited to attend a virtual town hall meeting at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, May 7, to discuss planning for in-person, on campus instruction for fall term. President Michael H. Schill announced the intent for fall term, including…
Pres Schill offers faculty union a pay cut proposal and a threat: take it or suffer the consequences
The short version, from the union:
Executive Summary
The administration wants faculty to agree to a wage cut plan in the event of revenue loss. United Academics leadership has concerns about the proposal and would like to bargain the plan. If UA does not agree to the wage cut plan, the administration intends to either non-renew all 211 Career faculty who are up for renewal this spring or offer them only 0.1 FTE contracts. In order for a wage cut plan for faculty to go into effect, the membership of United Academics would have to vote in favor of the plan.
In a nutshell this plan would put the full cost of any tuition losses or state funding cuts on the faculty and OAs. There is no discussion of an offset for increases in federal funding, such as the $16m UO is getting from the CARES act. There is no discussion of cuts for Johnson Hall’s pet projects.
There is no accountability for the administration’s past decisions to spend down UO’s reserves on an Athlete’s Village for the 2021 Track & Field championships, on utility connections for Hayward field, on the Law School, on continued hidden athletic subsidies, etc, which led to the decrease in reserves and the increase in bond debt.
There is no provision for shared governance oversight of future spending.
The scheme is barely progressive – the cuts start at a very low $40K, and the top rate peaks at $200K, meaning those making say $400K pay the same percentage as those making $200K.
Amusingly, or perhaps I should say incompetently, whoever cooked this scheme up does not understand the difference between average and marginal – so after these cuts, an AVP now making say $199,999 would end up with a higher salary than one making $200,001. Under the middle scenario, the new salaries would be $178,819 and $176,000, or a $2,820 bigger cut for the poor soul who started out $2 ahead. This does not inspire confidence in our VPFA and VPBP’s ability to run our university’s finance and budgeting without supervision.
Here’s the schedule, with 5 scenarios and corresponding cuts, as calculated by the Administration:
The Administration’s full draft proposal is here. The Faculty Union’s full response is below.
(Note: updated with info from an always well informed commenter, who also points out that this blog and its commenters sometimes come across as uncaring about the staff and OA’s who keep the university running. She is right, and for my part I resolve to try and do better on that.)
They will still get health benefits – thanks to work by HR. Assuming an average salary of $30,000, this will save UO about $2.2M a quarter, or 1/6 of a Jumbotron. It will be a windfall for the employees, except perhaps the most recent hires and ones who are paid the highest, who would be eligible for other policies, such as key employee insurance. This can help insure all the extremely essential employees a company has. For full-time workers at $15 an hour, instead of $500 or so a week take home, they will get ~$400 in regular unemployment benefits, plus the $600 per week CARES act add-on. Part time workers will do even better in percentage terms.
Of course first Oregon’s Employment Division needs to figure out how to get the checks out. Their COBOL system crashed again this weekend. For context, back on March 6th 1933, the day after his inauguration, FDR closed the entire U.S. banking system in response to bank runs. That week he had the Federal Reserve fly bags of freshly printed currency to banks across the country, and almost all banks were reopened and cashing paychecks by March 15.
President Schill’s message below the break:
And the Feds are already planning on additional higher ed funding, some of which will be conditioned on the state gov’t not decreasing its funding. https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/allocationsforsection18004a1ofcaresact.pdf
Reporter James Crepea here, with a simple recitation of the facts and numbers: EUGENE — Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens and UO president Michael Schill are among a group of the university’s top administrators taking voluntary pay cuts for at least the next six months — and possibly through the…
Or, in the parlance of our times, 1.3 Jumbotrons:
I wonder how much Johnson Hall paid the consultant who told them it would be a good idea to have a $150K PR flack moderate this. It seems Moffitt refused to participate, or was disinvited. Her substitutes were not up to the job. The Emerald has some damning quotes here.…
The cost of a year of contract extension for these faculty would be roughly $16M, or to put it in terms our Board of Trustees can understand, 1.3 Jumbotrons: Proposal for Career Faculty Job Security Dear Colleague, Earlier this morning, the leadership of United Academics sent the letter below to…
While UO faculty and staff need a hall pass from the dean to visit their office for 30 minutes, egofice construction continues. Nigel Jaquiss in WWeek, here: Oregon’s Construction Industry Is Chugging Along Like It’s Still 2019. Some Workers Say That’s Dangerous. Gov. Kate Brown’s March 23 order did not…
Today at 2:30: https://president.uoregon.edu/virtual-town-hall: Submit your questions for UO leadership now using an anonymous webform or emailing [email protected]. You can also submit questions during the live event by emailing [email protected]. Expectations are high: Meanwhile in bathrooms across Eugene, faculty begin their remote lectures with the tools they have on hand: