AAUP Chapter Crafts Retirement Plan
By Wendi Maloney
The administration of Marymount Manhattan College caught faculty by surprise when it announced the institution's first-ever retirement-incentive plan in July 2003. The faculty had wanted a formal policy to replace the college's practice of negotiating individual deals with retiring professors. "But the management foisted this new policy on us without any faculty input," says communications professor David Linton, who is president of the college's AAUP chapter.
The plan was open to faculty older than sixty who had worked at the institution for fifteen years or more. The administration gave them less than a year to sign up for it, after which it would no longer be available. It included no medical coverage or institutional contribution to faculty members' retirement accounts. Linton says that the individual arrangements faculty had negotiated with the administration in the past had typically included a severance package with medical coverage. "Many faculty saw the plan as an attempt to push out older professors," Linton says.
When AAUP leaders initiated a campaign to protest the plan and the process by which it was developed, chapter membership more than doubled. The chapter sent out campus-wide e-mail messages questioning the administration's behavior, organized small-group meetings, and communicated with the college's board of trustees about the blow to faculty morale the plan had caused.
The chapter also put forth a resolution to the institution's Faculty Council, the campus governance body. The resolution called on the administration to work with a faculty committee to develop a new retirement-incentive package that would replace the one on offer. The administration reluctantly agreed to do so, Linton says.
The committee began to research retirement plans, starting with the AAUP's 2000 Survey of Changes in Faculty Retirement Policies. None of the policies included in the survey was as good as the informal practice that had been in place at Marymount Manhattan, in Linton's estimation. So the committee devised its own plan, carefully assessing its implications for the college's budget and curriculum and the replacement of retirees.
The new plan includes full medical benefits that continue after faculty become eligible for Medicare. It permits faculty to phase out of their workload over one, two, or three years, during which time they will receive half pay for a half load, plus additional compensation based on seniority. In addition, the institution will continue to contribute to faculty retirement accounts during the phase-out period. "It is the best formal plan I've ever seen," Linton says.
He notes that in advocating the plan among administrators, faculty leaders "pointed out that having a more permanent, rational retirement plan in place would benefit the administration as well as the faculty." The plan requires faculty to notify the administration two semesters in advance of an impending retirement, allowing the administration to avoid last-minute scrambling to cover classes and fill open positions.
When faculty leaders presented the new plan to faculty, they approved it unanimously. The administration later requested and received approval of the plan from the board of trustees. It will initially be available for three years, after which faculty and administrators will re-evaluate and possibly adjust it.
Commenting on the surge in AAUP membership that occurred during the plan's development, Linton says that "adversity is always the best organizing tool, sad to say." Nonetheless, he thinks that his colleagues have become more politically sensitive and will continue to push for involvement in important decisions on campus. "We have really turned a corner in labor-management relations at our college," he says.
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