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MADISON -- Implementing furloughs for all University of Wisconsin System employees will be difficult to track, hurt the competitiveness of researchers and raise legal concerns, system leaders said Thursday.
UW System President Kevin Reilly and chancellors at several campuses also acknowledged they were preparing for the possibility of employee layoffs. The comments came as the UW System Board of Regents was briefed on the two-year budget plan approved by the Legislature’s budget committee last week.
The plan requires all employees to take eight days of unpaid leave for each of the next two years, takes away 2 percent raises for faculty and academic staff this month and cuts $120 million in general support for the system of 13 four-year universities and 13 two-year colleges.
Reilly said the budget will mean larger class sizes, fewer classes available and longer waits for student services. He said the pay cut and furloughs also derail the system’s long-term plan to boost the below-average salaries of faculty and staff, which is seen as a competitive disadvantage for the system.
Reilly said the system has also been instructed by state officials to prepare to lay off unionized employees but he provided no details about that planning. Gov. Jim Doyle has warned that up to 400 additional layoffs will be required since union employees, unlike others, have not given up their 2 percent pay increases.
Doyle is requiring all UW employees, even those paid for by non-state revenue sources such as federal grants and private donations, to be treated the same for furloughs. Some UW employees have criticized the plan because idling those employees will not help balance the state budget. Campuses will be allowed to keep the savings of grants and donations.
"What’s the rationale for that? I don’t understand it," said Regent Jeffrey Bartell. "The money doesn’t come back to the state."
Reilly responded that the system was being forced to implement the furloughs that way.
"On one level it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense," he said. "On another level trying to administer a situation where you have some on furloughs and some not would be a real nightmare administratively."
Doyle has said that furloughing all state employees is a matter of fairness.
UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin warned, however, that forcing top researchers to take days off will put them at a competitive disadvantage compared to rivals on other campuses. For one campus lab alone, it means 100 hours of less research being conducted during the next two years, she said.
"What the researchers are pointing out is not only does that not help the state financially but potentially it hurts the state," she said.
Reilly said that simply tracking the days that employees are forced to take off will be a huge administrative challenge. The system’s aging and increasingly unreliable human resources and payroll computer program, which is in the process of being replaced, might not be up to the task, he said.
"That’s one of the things that keeps me up at night," he said.
As for layoffs, UW-Oshkosh Chancellor Richard Wells cautioned that campuses must be strategic in handling them and not be seen as retaliating against unions who kept their raises.
UW System lawyer Pat Brady said that was just one of many legal issues that have been raised during the planning for furloughs and layoffs. She said she was working to minimize the system’s legal risks.
UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow said the campus might not have any other option but to cut employees. He said UW-La Crosse has already declined to renew contracts for academic staff members for the coming year because of the uncertainty.
"There’s no denying this is an unprecedented time and there’s a great deal of uncertainty and tension," Gow said. "Hopefully we can do it without job loss, but I’ll tell you, we’re at a point right now where all the ideas we had are pretty well used up. You start getting down to some pretty unpalatable things."
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