Dear Civil Service Employees:

On Monday, April 18, a memo went to all unit executive officers outlining a process and timeline they must follow if they are considering the elimination of any Civil Service positions as they plan for next year. Ordinarily, it is not necessary to coordinate layoffs when units eliminate positions. Because of the current budget uncertainty, however, a larger number of units are engaging in restructuring than normally occurs at one time. These efforts to reduce costs and become more efficient always affect multiple types of employees (administrators, other academic professionals and Civil Service staff). When multiple units are restructuring in ways that include Civil Service employees, it can be challenging to manage the impact on our employees because of bumping rights that Civil Service employees hold. By coordinating any layoffs, it is our hope that we can minimize the total number of Civil Service employees affected across the campus.

Monday’s email and the plan it announced is not a campus directive to eliminate positions and is not any kind of layoff notice. The goal of this preliminary planning process is to limit the impact on our employees by preserving as many positions as possible and ensuring that every employee can exercise his or her full employment rights.

The memo to unit executive officers outlined a position elimination period that mandates:

• a single date (May 16) by which units must submit any proposed position eliminations to Staff Human Resources (SHR);
• a date range (now-June 27) during which SHR will review each layoff request, the employment rights of the affected individual, and the cascading effects associated with seniority bumping rights;
• a date range (May 17-June 27) to work with units to develop best plans to address their specific needs and to work with affected employees to discuss their rights and options;
• a single final date (July 25) for all units to inform employees who will be laid off;
• and the effective date of any final layoffs will be August 27.

Additionally, Staff Human Resources has taken several immediate actions designed to limit the impact on our staff both in terms of layoff and bumping. These include a temporary suspension of any new Civil Service hiring and the limiting of Civil Service testing.

Yesterday’s memo did not discuss other employee groups because Civil Service employees are the only employees who have bumping rights. It is the case, however, that campus units are looking at all aspects of their budgets and making tough decisions about staffing levels across all employment groups. As I’ve said in my recent budget presentations, the vast majority of our state budget allocation is spent on our people. And the reductions we anticipate require us to be proactive in our human resource planning for the future.

The memo to unit executive officers was intended to help them plan in ways that would be least disruptive and alarming to our campus community. We believe that this planning and coordination process gives us an opportunity to keep the number of laid off employees at an absolute minimum. We will be more direct in our communication about these efforts going forward.

We understand uncertainty can be frustrating and I encourage you to speak with Employment Services (333-2137) with any questions you have about this process.

Regards,

Edward Feser
Interim Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost