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Addressing retiree concerns
Thursday, April 17 between 10:00 a.m. and noon, Jeff Harkins and I will convey our concerns about the changes to the University of Idaho’s health/life insurance program to the State Board of Education (Regents) in the Clearwater-Whitewater Room in the Commons Building on campus.
The UI policy implemented last year is not the “deal” that retirees expected and deserve. The life insurance plan alone has cost us at least $10 million in lost benefits as well as untold millions in health insurance. I will focus on UI’s two early retirement programs (ERIP and VSROP), but will include all retirees classified as emeritus faculty or honored staff. I believe that UI erred when it dramatically changed the retiree’s insurance program without contacting individual ERIP/VSROP participants as stipulated in legal contracts. Jeff and I will also describe the GASB 45 program and why it should not be a consideration for our retiree benefits.
Why am I doing this? I was part of the administration during the ERIP/VSROP programs and retired after 33 years at UI. I feel it is important to try and uphold promises made to faculty and staff who trustingly signed contracts or worked faithfully for many years believing that their compensation included paid life/health insurance after retirement. I know that many retirees are concerned about UI’s new insurance policy and Jeff and I urge you to attend this important meeting.
Earl H. Bennett
Professor Emeritus, former dean, College of Mines and Earth Resources and College of Science
Don’t brush aside the message
The Argonaut story on faculty moral and the Yardley report misrepresented faculty opinion. The story was apparently derived from only two sources, a representative of the AFT (Dr. Nick Gier) and a representative of Faculty Council (Dr. Paul Oman). Although Dr. Gier and Dr. Oman are well meaning and intelligent people, they are not representative of many key faculty constituencies.
The AFT has a very small membership at UI, largely because they confuse equal pay with salary equity. Very few faculty would agree to leveling all faculty salaries on campus according to years of service. It is a basic fact that some disciplines command higher salaries. Paying faculty exclusively according to how many years they have stayed at Idaho would lead almost every scientist, engineer, business school, or law school professor to go elsewhere. Gier surely knew that law professors made higher salaries than philosophy professors when he chose to study philosophy. Rather, UI faculty should be paid equitably with comparable faculty at peer institutions. The objective is to keep the best faculty here, not to drive away the ones most in demand.
As for Yardley, the only input Faculty Council received on the Yardley report was strongly in favor of taking it seriously. But Oman and some others on Faculty Council were predisposed to dismiss the report before taking public comment. The Yardley report was not the first time UI has been told to take its research an graduate missions more seriously. Research brings in more than $100 million a year to the university. More importantly, creating knowledge is why we exist — it’s what distinguishes university from high school. The Yardley report correctly observed, yet again, that many UI administrators and faculty have not adequately supported or appreciated the research and graduate enterprise. That message should not be brushed away because it is “insulting” or “divisive.”
James A. Foster
Professor, biological sciences
Please, look it up
Regarding Herbert Hoover’s do-nothingness (“Wait-and-see versus unproven potential,” Benjamin Ledford, April 8). Look him up in Wiki and find out that he actually did quite a lot to try to deal with the economic downturn. But, some of what he did made things worse. There is one interesting paragraph in Wiki that has echoes in this year’s campaign with all the talk of protectionism and higher taxes:
“In 1930 Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised tariffs on over 20,000 dutiable items, despite the protests of economists. Major trading partners, like Canada, immediately retaliated. The tariff, combined with the 1932 Revenue Act, which hiked taxes and fees across the board, is often blamed for deepening the depression. It brought on a wave of retaliation and choked world trade.”
John Knudsen, Honored emeritus retiree, economics, finance and information systems
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