[Pols-l] FW: Follow up on raise announcement for employees with under 5 years service as a state employee in Kansas

Wed Jul 19 12:06:21 CDT 2017

FYI

From: Lejuez, Carl Wilborne
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2017 12:00 PM
To: College Chairs & Directors <college_chairs_directors at ku.edu>
Subject: Follow up on raise announcement for employees with under 5 years service as a state employee in Kansas

Chairs and Directors:

You received an email yesterday (copies below) about the Kansas Legislature authorizing raises for faculty and unclassified staff who have been Kansas state employees (including time at KU) for less than 5 years (the time is calculated cumulatively across different state positions and does not reset based on an interruption in employment by the state). That email provided detailed information and may answer questions you have and questions you may be asked. With that said, if you have any specific questions please reach out to me and I am happy to try to clarify and/or seek additional information you need.

The KU Budget Office sent Mark Reynolds a file with a list of staff that will receive the 2.5% increase.  Mark will be sending an email to the employee's supervisor to make them aware that their employee will be receiving the increase.  Many of these employees are grant-funded so the PI's will need to be aware that their grants will be charged at the higher salary. Mark will get another list of faculty that will receive the increase sometime in August and will send that information to department chairs. If you have particular questions about this, please reach out to Mark.

I do not fully understand the rationale for this decision, but what I have learned is that it was done with good intentions and fits with pressing equity needs in other sectors of state employment. I did voice my concerns at our meeting of deans and provosts at KU regarding the implications this could have on newer hires being paid more than veteran employees, but the decisions had already been made in Topeka by the legislature without consultation from KU or other higher education institutions in the state (as far as I am aware).

Currently, neither KU as a Campus, nor the College in particular, has the budget to systematically provide raises to those who will not receive a raise at this time. With our budget cuts from last year being passed on to us this year, we simply do not have the reserves to address an unexpected need such as this without decimating our future hiring plans or having to ask your units to make cuts (two things that are not viable options at this time). Moreover, trying to address compression/inequities - even in a relatively small number of cases- at this time will bring impactful budgetary consequences as I mentioned above and runs the risk of creating further inequity for those whose compression/inequity issues aren't addressed (thereby providing the potential for further challenges for the chairs/directors of those individuals).

This will be hard for some faculty and staff (we will have these issues in our office as well), and for you all as chairs and directors. I am sorry for that. Mark and I will be discussing a longer term plan to address any consequences as I indicated above. I will share more about this at a future chairs and directors meeting and seek your ideas and feedback, but do reach out if you have questions in the meantime.

Carl

--
Carl W. Lejuez, PhD
Dean
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
University of Kansas
Strong Hall, Room 200
1450 Jayhawk Boulevard
Lawrence, KS 66045
clejuez at ku.edu<mailto:clejuez at ku.edu>

From: Human Resource Management-KU <hrdept at ku.edu<mailto:hrdept at ku.edu>>
Date: July 18, 2017 at 2:18:30 PM CDT
To: KU Lawrence Faculty and Staff <kulfs at ku.edu<mailto:kulfs at ku.edu>>
Subject: State of Kansas Salary Increases
Colleagues,

The State of Kansas Legislature has authorized salary increases for some faculty and unclassified staff.  The pay increases will be provided to faculty and staff in "benefits eligible" positions who were employed by the state of Kansas as of July 1, 2017 and meet one of the criteria listed below.  At KU "benefits eligible" positions are defined as regular positions with an appointment of 48% or more.

Eligible faculty and staff may receive either a 5% or 2.5% pay increase based on the following criteria established by the Kansas Legislature.

*         Eligibility for Pay Increase off 5%: To receive a 5% pay increase, faculty and staff must have been continuously employed with the State of Kansas, without any break in service since July 1, 2012, and cannot have received a salary increase of any kind since that date. The number of such eligible faculty and staff at KU for this increase will be very small since salary increases have been provided during the past 5 years to virtually every employee.

*         Eligibility for Pay Increase off 2.5%: To receive a 2.5% increase, employees must have first become employed by the State of Kansas after July 1, 2012 through July 1, 2017.

Student employees and employees appointed to temporary positions are ineligible.

The salary increases are effective July 2, 2017 for faculty and staff with fiscal year appointments and August 18, 2017 for faculty and staff with academic year appointments. The increases will be paid respectively on July 28 and September 8, 2017.

The salary increases will be provided to eligible faculty and staff regardless of funding sources. Human Resource Management will notify eligible faculty and staff of the increases.

If faculty or staff have questions regarding eligibility for the increases, please direct questions to hrdept at ku.edu<mailto:hrdept at ku.edu> .  Thank you.

Mike Rounds
Associate Vice Provost for Human Resource Management

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