University President Richard Lariviere received flak earlier this month from the governor’s office for allowing campus employees to offset state-mandated unpaid furlough days with overtime hours.
In a headlong effort to balance the state’s fledging budget, Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski ordered many state employees to cut their monthly working hours in order to reap “personnel savings” and ease financial stresses for the rest of the current budget period ending June 30. The state, working through the Oregon University System, ended up hammering out a furlough agreement with the Service Employees International Union Local 503, an Oregon-based union of more than 40,000 public employees that provides accounting, bookkeeping and other support services to Oregon universities, among many other public entities.
In reaction, Lariviere permitted up to 1,000 University employees belonging to the union to replace their pay cuts resulting from the contracted furlough hours with overtime, creating an income imbalance with state employees holding similar contracts. Nearly 8 percent of the University’s 20,000 full-time employees are union members in the SEIU’s Local 503.
In other words, as other state government employees and the rest of the university system wrestled with income cuts as an effect of the furloughs, University staff members belonging to the SEIU worked fewer hours and were paid the same by incorporating overtime.
In a solemn and pointed Oct. 1 letter to Lariviere, Kulongoski’s Chief of Staff Tim Nesbitt warned the president that the furloughs necessitated a “shared sacrifice among all employees,” and that resisting to comply could disconcert state budget writers.
“The OUS bargaining agreement with SEIU … secure(s) a common commitment to trimming personnel costs by all state agencies and balanc(ing) the overall budget,” Nesbitt wrote to the president. “You run the risk of budget writers in both the legislative and executive branches questioning your compliance with their directives.”
Lariviere rationalized the use of overtime because he authorized cuts in the school’s budget in other areas equal to what would have been saved through the furlough days, which in the end still complied with the state’s spending-cut mandate. By maintaining the income of the University’s lowest-paid workers, the president figured he could protect the livelihoods of employees most affected by the reductions.
“We just did it through operational efficiencies rather than the mandated mechanism,” the president told the Register-Guard on Oct. 18. “The concern was to protect our most vulnerable colleagues in all of this.”
The OUS has taken the governor’s side in the issue and has faith that Lariviere can be convinced to toe the line.
“The (OUS) Chancellor is confident that President Lariviere will follow the governor’s office guidance in discontinuing the overtime practice,” the OUS Chancellor’s Office Director of Communications Diane Saunders said. “Each OUS campus’ classified staff are under the same collective bargaining agreements and have followed the governor’s office need for state employees to be partners in managing through budget reductions, although none used overtime for classified staff as UO did.”
According to Nesbitt, as of Monday “(the) matter has been resolved with President Lariviere.” Nesbitt did not respond to inquiries about specifics of the disagreement.
[email protected]