Last week, I mentioned this odd “gesture of appreciation” my university was making to thank us for all our hard work and sacrifices during these pandemic years. We could take two days off in the coming semester. I was baffled…no, I can’t. I’m in a salaried position with daily responsibilities to my students and colleagues — unless you’re telling me that I can send the students home, this is a meaningless, useless gift.
I said as much to one of our administrators, and whoa, I got a straight answer from them. They admitted that “the days off are not as meaningful a gift of time for faculty as for others.” They’re a good thing for staff with regular 9-5 working days, I agree — of course, I suspect that they’ll get eaten up with sick days, or days spent caring for kids who’ve been sent home for school. Then I was told I “can take a day off formally, in the system when you are not teaching”, which is great, except that teaching is something I have to do every day, and is my primary job responsibility. So basically this is a promise of a little extra free time that I’m not allowed to take, but hey, the administration at the Twin Cities campus gets to feel good about doing a little something which is actually nothing.
I suspect some out of touch bright MBA in the marble halls of the central administration wracked their brains really hard to come up with a sop to the workers that would look really good on paper to outsiders, yet wouldn’t cost the university a penny.
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you might want to check with HR. Often, unused vacation days can be ‘cashed out’ for salaried personnel (something like 1 vacation day = 1/200 annual salary in $).
Well, it is a benefit to those with regular hours, as you state, so it does cost the university. Universities have many non-teaching employees. Maybe they should have targeted the announcement better.
If you can’t sell the two days back for cash, then save them to use on days before or after the semester when you are “required” to attend faculty meetings or employee meetings. Aren’t those the only eligible days, so isn’t that obviously the administration’s intent?
In the financial crunch of the early 1990s, at Dalhousie, we were told we had to take 3.5 days of without pay. I didn’t notice any of my fellow professors taking any days off, and nor did I.
The administration, of course, knew that we wouldn’t.
A little over a year ago, I received this lovely email that gushed over how hard university staff has been working despite the challenges:
They forgot to include the asterisk after “everyone” and corresponding footnote that clarified “Not you, you’re a grad student. Your work-life balance will proceed as usual.”