Colleagues,
I'm sorry about this long message, but it's important, and I want to tell
you everything that I know about this situation. Under the law, an employer must provide healthcare coverage to anyone working for thirty or more hours a week. YSU's solution is to ensure that non-union part-time employees work no more than 29 hours. For immediate implementation, Human Resources has capped part-time faculty teaching at 18 hours a year. The University is using a two-to-one ratio for courses to calculate working hours: one hour of contact time to two hours of prep. So a three-credit course like 1550 is considered nine work hours per week. If you teach three courses, it's 27 work hours per week, thus under the 30-hour cap. In our case, usually that means a maximum of six courses, but 1539 is an exception since it's at four semester hours. If you teach 1539, you are still limited to 18 credits a year; that would be a maximum of four sections of 1539 (16 hours); or a mix of 1539s and other composition courses that stay at or below 18 credits per year. It's crucial that you be vigilant about this cap as you consider additional teaching or tutoring assignments. If you exceed the maximum hours, YSU will not employ you the following year. We will have no recourse. If you teach or work in another department part-time, it will be the TOTAL number of hours. If you teach in American Studies for six hours, you can teach a maximum of twelve semester-hours here over a year. If you work as a tutor, those hours are also important. Same issue: you cannot go beyond twenty-nine work hours a week. English has no choice but to ensure that our part-time faculty remain under the eighteen-credit cap; this cap applies immediately. We don't want to imperil our ability to keep you; you're valuable to us. Guy said he would go through his assignments to ensure that we've kept you in safe territory. We can only check what we know, however, so be sure to check with any other on-campus employment to ensure you're safely under that hour-limit. Below I'm pasting in the email that the chairs received that outlines the situation: Part-Time Faculty Benefits (presentation from Kevin Reynolds and Debby
LaRocca) The University is permitted to define the look-back period (determining the time frame for which the 30 hours will be reviewed) and to define clock hours as it relates to Workload hours (for part-time faculty). Human Resources is finalizing these two definitions. As proposed, the period will be defined as one calendar year, beginning Fall and running through Summer. The first period will be Fall 2012 through Summer 2013. In addition, the workload that will be allowed for one calendar year (as defined) will be a TOTAL of 18 workload hours. No part-time faculty will be permitted to work more than 18 WH during this time period. Should this occur, the part-time faculty members will not be eligible for employment for the next year (unless the University pays health benefits, which YSU does not intend to do). The Provost's Office hopes to have HR finalize the definitions next week and then send out a final set of definitions. In the meantime, you should review your part-time faculty's load and be sure that no one has hours in the spring term that will put him/her over the 18-hour limit. Guy and I wish this weren't the case. We'll do our best to keep you informed and to work with you to ensure that you remain in compliance with the caps. We value your hard and careful work. Julia Julia M. Gergits, Ph.D. |