New Pay Plan Has UI Employees Up In Arms Faculty, Staff To Lose Two Weeks’ Salary Until They Quit Or Retire

The University of Idaho’s 2,300 employees will go two weeks without pay next spring when administrators change the way wages are doled out.

Employees will collect the lost earnings only when they quit or retire, a move that has sparked outrage on and off campus.

“We have faculty and staff worrying they’ll get caught short during the year,” said Larry Branen, a member of the faculty council, which represents the university’s 800 educators.

Michael West, chairman of the university’s staff affairs committee, which represents 1,500 non-faculty workers, said employees are “spun up.”

“When you talk about paychecks, people get really tense really quickly,” he said.

University employees still will be paid every two weeks. The only change is the work period the checks will represent.

Currently, the university pays every other Friday for work performed during the same and preceding week.

Under the new plan, unveiled to West’s committee last week, checks would cover a pay period that ends two weeks before payday - the way other state agencies have paid employees since 1982. The university plans to hold two weeks’ pay to institute the new plan.

Workers are angry and nervous.

One employee sent “urgent” computer mail to university employees Friday, urging them to call Jerry Wallace, the university’s financial vice president, and complain.

The employee also wanted to know who would keep the salary savings from the skipped payroll period.

But Wallace said the change is necessary because the current system creates confusion and error.

Administrative payroll accounting, for example, has to be complete before the pay period ends. When employees quit or take non-paid leaves during the last few days of a pay period, it’s not always reflected in their checks.

“We’re finding it more and more difficult to reconcile the errors with the state, to account for all the corrections,” he said.

Wallace conceded, however, that administrators have not completely reviewed alternatives, such as paying the lost wages a little at a time over the course of the year preceding the change.

In fact, the plan originally called for holding back checks in early December.

“We complained, ‘That’s the month we pay taxes, that’s a month with heavy heating bills, that’s Christmas,”’ said one staff member who asked not to be named. “They (administrators) said, ‘Take $50 a pay period and put it away.”’

Wallace said staff outrage convinced administrators to put off the move until next May - a month with three paydays. He said he hoped that would cushion the blow.

But employees are skeptical.

“There are lots of times when both family members work for the university,” West said. “Those people will really take a hit.”

Some wonder if it’s legal.

“All faculty sign an annual contract stating they will be paid X amount between July 1995 and June 1996,” Branen said. “But I’m sure there’s a way around that.”

There is, Wallace said. Faculty members still will be paid that amount for work performed in that time frame - the check just won’t come this year.

Members of Moscow’s business community also are furious that the city’s largest employer will retain $2.5 million in wages that otherwise would be pumped back into the economy.

“When you live in a place the size of Moscow, something like this is going to have a major impact on the whole town,” West said.

Bob Green, owner of the downtown business Book People, agrees. “How big an effect it’s going to have is difficult to say, but it will definitely result in a decrease in business.”

, DataTimes