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“Staff to Trim” Says Marge

We were alerted this morning to the following email sent by President Hamilton to certain employees. We are very concerned about plans to “trim” staff (see text in bold) and we reached out to Shane Turner (HR), and President Hamilton directly demanding an explanation.

Please see our complete email thread (including the response we received) below:

All,
Congratulations on LCC winning the bond. This community supports us, trusts us and is depending on us to provide them with training and education to help them in recovery. Each and every one of you played a part in winning this bond and I sincerely thank you. That said, we have to roll up our sleeves and get to work. There are short term certificates to build, buildings to fix, an IT infrastructure to replenish, faculty to hire and staff to trim. Most of all, we have to recover from COVID.
You are an awesome team and I will be pushing you all harder than ever to meet this herculean task. I know you are all up to it so we need more than ever to work as a team.
Congratulations. Hard work does pay off.  It is an honor to work with you all.
Marge

Email sent by Margaret Hamilton, Tuesday, May 20, 2020

Hi Marge, 
Would you please shed some light and help me better understand what you meant in your email when you said “There are … staff to trim”?

Response email sent by LCCEF EC, Tuesday, May 20, 2020

We are looking at a retirement incentive first. I believe that Shane spoke to you and Frankie about that. We are hopeful that the incentive will help people on the fence to make a decision. That is the least painful way to trim our staffing. Paul also made recommendations to merge academic divisions. This will reduce the number of deans. He is consolidating several areas and not replacing managers. 

We need that dust to settle from retirements and see where our numbers are. We are not replacing vacancies that are not needed- such as the Nurse Practitioner in the clinic. I have spoken openly about this. We are waiting to see how much the managerial reductions and the retirements can bring us. Most importantly, we need to hear how much our college budget will actually be cut by the state.

We all know that people want to know if there will be salary freezes, furloughs or layoffs and I am doing everything possible to use incentives and voluntary actions before moving to involuntary actions. I understand that some actions need to be bargained and Shane is preparing to talk to you and Frankie about next steps. I will be recommending a salary cut for me and the executive team and any other measure possible. 

I appreciate your concern and welcome any and all ideas to find the $5 million (hopefully less).

Marge

Followup email sent by Margaret Hamilton, Tuesday, May 20, 2020

We’ve had several discussions with the administration recently regarding potential layoffs or furloughs and have been repeatedly told none are being considered at this time. We recently received multiple emails concerning rumors around custodial staff layoffs; our discussions with HR dispelled those rumors and we were assured that custodial staff would, in actuality, be receiving increased hours in coming terms.

The response email from President Hamilton mentions a potential retirement incentive as one voluntary budget-balancing measure. Though the administration stated at the Spring Conference In-service that they were not considering retirement incentives this year, they later agreed to consider them at our suggestion. Please see the Retirement Incentive Post for more details.

We want to stress that LCCEF is not encouraging people to retire as a means to balance the budget, prevent their colleagues from being laid off or furloughed, or “save” other employees’ jobs. We simply want the option to be available to those who are already considering retirement. Under no circumstances will we support layoffs of our employees!

The EC is scheduled to meet with the cabinet this Friday and will post if there are any updates at that time. Please join us as we continue this discussion at our General Membership Meeting Wednesday, May 27, at 12 pm and 5 pm (via Zoom – stayed tuned for an invite).

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