Since July 2010, much of UNM’s part-time faculty retirement contributions were significantly scaled down, and in some cases slashed altogether. But on Monday faculty passed a proposal that could provide more benefits to more part-time faculty members.
The proposal passed 312 to 23 in a faculty-wide vote and would amend the faculty handbook to create a new faculty position called “term-teaching faculty.” The proposal will be submitted to the Board of Regents for review.
Term-teaching faculty would be guaranteed to work 520 hours per year, the requirement for faculty members to be eligible for retirement contributions. This change is the first proposed amendment to the faculty handbook this semester.
Former math department chair Deborah Sulsky helped write the proposal and said amendments to the handbook are rare because they require a two-thirds majority of all UNM faculty to pass.
In July 2010, the President’s Strategic Advisory Team and the Office of the President cut retirement benefits for instructors who work fewer than 520 hours per year. Before the cut, UNM supplemented each part-time faculty member’s Educational Retirement Board fund, providing 11 percent of the total contribution.
Sue Niemczyk, a part-time instructor who said she’s nearing retirement, said she feels UNM doesn’t care about its part-time instructors, and that many of them fear losing their jobs if they speak out. Niemczyk said part-time instructors previously accrued retirement the moment they started working, but now they miss out on the 520 hours of benefits. She said they aren’t paid retroactively for obtaining the 520 hours to be eligible for retirement pay.
“Most PTIs are afraid of their own shadows,” she said. “In the math department, PTI contracts are written for one semester at a time and no one is given a contract until the Friday before the semester starts. There is no PTI job security. And even if PTIs are hired back, they can be given miserable teaching assignments if they upset someone of significance.”
Helen Gonzales, vice president of human resources, developed the plan to cut part-time faculty’s ERB benefits, which has saved UNM over $1 million, said Michael Dougher, vice provost for academic affairs.
Sulsky said the money saved isn’t worth the cost to part-time faculty.
“The flagship institution of higher learning in New Mexico has adopted a policy which hurts some of its worst paid yet most dedicated, hardest working and, some would say, most important employees,” she said. “For example, the overwhelming number of students taking math classes at UNM are taught by PTIs. These retirement cuts save UNM only a very small amount, but some PTIs will be hurt substantially for the rest of their lives.”
Sulsky said faculty suggested a number of solutions, such as UNM paying retroactively into the ERB once employees reach 520 hours of work, but each suggestion hit “a wall of red tape.” Also, legal difficulties in the ERB kept part-time faculty without a solution for more than a year.
“For every proposal or suggestion, there is a reason why they can’t do it that way, and there has not really been a suggestion from Helen Gonzales on exactly what needs to be done,” she said.
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Sulsky said Interim Provost Chaouki Abdallah and Dougher helped develop the new proposal, which is the first submitted to the faculty as a viable solution since funding was cut in July.
“The unintended negative consequences needed to be redressed,” Dougher said.
Gonzales and ERB representatives did not respond to multiple calls and emails as of Tuesday afternoon.
