University of Idaho faculty members and administrators took their first steps into a discussion on spread pay at the first meeting of the issue”s task force earlier this month.
At the meeting, Becky Tallent, task force chair, began the process of divvying up projects and defining the problems – Is there an exception for education? What do the other schools do? What are the alternatives?
“And this one is really important to me,” Tallent said. “What do faculty and staff really think?”
Tallent said she wanted to encourage the task force to deliver a survey and set up some sort of open forum or discussion to allow any member of university faculty or staff to voice their opinions.
Provost and Executive Vice President John Wiencek lead the discussion for the first half of the meeting. Wiencek explained the spread pay issue as he understood it, offered suggestions for possible solutions and stated his goals for the task force.
“I am not invested in a particular outcome,” he said. “I just want the group to come together and come up with a solution that is objective.”
He said payroll issues like this get complicated quickly, because of the many concurrent processes, such as faculty work on the academic year, are paid on the fiscal year and receive benefits on the calendar year.
During the meeting, Wiencek said spread pay exists to make financing easier on employees and often provides a sense of stability. He said there are also the less tangible benefits of spread pay.
“It really does make them feel like they”re still connected with the university and like the university is recognizing their contribution,” Wiencek said. “In reality, that is something that makes them feel good, but the university is not actually paying them anything more.”
The possible legal concerns lie in the misalignment of the academic year with the fiscal year. The fiscal year begins with July.
Wiencek proposed a possible solution to this in which payment does not start until a faculty member begins work. In this system, payment would only be deferred and never advanced.
Although there was a large amount of backlash to the spring announcement that spread pay would be discontinued, some faculty and staff support its elimination because of the strain it causes to payroll staff.
“One thing I think has gotten lost is that I think I actually received more emails from people happy to see this go,” Wiencek said.
Task force member and Payroll Manager Cretia Bunney said Wiencek”s plan would likely lift some of their burden. She said in a deferment-only system, her office would only have to calculate money the university owes and not money owed to the university.
Wiencek also brought up a financial reason why employees might want to opt out of spread pay: Interest.
In theory, Wiencek said an employee is paid the same amount in the end whether or not they choose spread pay. Yet, this is not the case when interest is factored in. If paid sooner rather than later, the money saved to live off during the summer could accrue interest, he said.
Wiencek said he is does not yet know if spread pay needs to be eliminated or changed at all. But he said there are changes to how employees are paid and he wants the task force to minimize the negative effects of the changes.
“If we ever make this transition, there is that gap we need to help our employees with,” he said.
To bridge the gap, he proposed a system that saves 5 percent of a person”s pay over a transition of five years.
Nishant Mohan can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @NishantRMohan