The University of Wisconsin-Madison Academic Staff Assembly announced Monday the assembly will wait until its November meeting to take a formal position on the university’s recent Human Resources redesign plan.
The new plan aims to improve university employee recruitment and retainment in response to the recent decline in state support by making changes to employee benefits, compensation and diversity efforts.
According to Academic Staff Executive Committee Chair Jeff Shokler, the assembly decided to delay its decision following recent news that the UW System Board of Regents will not take action on the plan until its December meeting. Initially, the assembly was scheduled to vote on the plan in Monday’s meeting.
An extra month will allow academic staff more time to review and respond to the document, Shokler said.
“Our timing has changed a little bit but it’s for the best,” Shokler said. “It’s giving us time to be more deliberative and produce hopefully a better … white paper for [the Academic Staff Assembly] and also resolutions for you to consider at our next meeting.”
In a previous meeting, the assembly created an ad-hoc committee on HR design to create a “white paper” summary of the document, which would highlight how the proposal could affect academic staff members.
The documentation will be distributed to assembly members as a condensed report within the next week.
ASEC and ad-hoc committee member Robert Newsom said although members of the special committee generally supported the plan, they also expressed concern over a few key issues they felt the plan needed to address in more detail, such as compensation and layoff policy.
The assembly will vote on a resolution supporting all or part of the plan at its Nov.12 meeting.
Chancellor David Ward also spoke to the assembly about his hopes for the university to garner new flexibilities from the UW system and state in the future, similar to his State of the University speech in front of the Faculty Senate last week.
