Staff given only a week to consider senior staff scheme
Senior staff scheme. Just one week before the deadline for applications, staff were informed about the option of applying for a senior staff scheme. This is not good enough – but unfortunately it’s typical of the way the management are handling the cuts, says joint union representative Per Dahl.
Any AU staff who are more than 60 years old and have worked for the state for more than ten years can apply for a senior staff scheme – but the management have only given them a week to consider the offer. The scheme was announced at the end of January, and the deadline for applications is 4 February. According to Per Dahl, who is the joint union representative for the academic staff, this is not good enough. And he said so at an extraordinary meeting of the main liaison committee held on 27 January.
“This has been announced at the eleventh hour, and the rector admitted as much at the meeting,” he says. But he does think that the scheme is a good idea.
“The senior staff scheme is better than the voluntary retirement scheme because the salary savings will take effect from 1 April, which might help to reduce the number of redundancies. It also means that we can retain the services of our experienced employees, instead of losing the valuable knowledge that they possess.”
For the same reason, he believes that the management should have done even more to make the scheme as attractive as possible for staff. The senior staff scheme means that staff will go down in working hours to a minimum of 15 hours a week without losing the pension payments to which they are entitled under their present contract of employment.
“The management have decided that these extra pension payments will only be disbursed for a maximum of 18 months. But they should have said three years to make the scheme as attractive as possible.”
Too much of a rush
Even though Dahl describes discussion of this issue with the rector as “absolutely fine”, he still thinks that the latest announcement about the senior staff scheme is characteristic of the way the management have handled the process of making cuts.
“The extent of the problems was only discovered at a late stage, which means that they have been in too much of a rush. This is what happened with the voluntary retirement scheme, and now it’s happening with the senior staff scheme: detailed questions are constantly being asked by the staff which the management haven’t thought through. So lots of problems are being solved on an ad hoc basis, creating a sense of vagueness and insecurity among staff.”
At the Faculty of Arts, where Dahl is an associate professor, it has been exceptionally difficult to gain a clear overview of the budget, he explains.
“It’s been difficult to get hold of valid figures, which makes it hard to assess the budget and get a true picture of the situation,” he says.
Extra expense
He also points out one other thing which staff should remember when assessing the budgets.
“At the extraordinary meeting of the main liaison committee, it was announced that the management have set aside a pool of about DKK 10 million to defray the costs incurred in connection with the voluntary retirement scheme, the senior staff scheme, staff redeployment, holiday allowances and competence development schemes. But this money has already been included in the budgets of our departments and deputy directors, which means that these costs have to be met by local budgets. It’s an extra expense that has to be remembered when assessing our budgets,” he concludes.
Translated by Nicholas Wrigley