The administration of Marymount Manhattan community 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.

The administration of Marymount Manhattan community 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 strange policy on us without any faculty input," says communications professor David Linton, who is president of the college's AAUP chapter.

The plan was render free of access to faculty older than sixty who had worked at the institution for fifteen years or more. The administration gave them les 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 on the outside older professors," Linton says.

When AAUP leaders initiated a campaign to asseverate the plan and the proces from which it was developed, chapter membership more than doubled. The chapter sent gone 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 lick to faculty morale the plan had caused.

The chapter also deposit forth a resolution to the institution's Faculty Council, the campus governance dead body The resolution called on the administration to work with a faculty committee to exhibit a new retirement-incentive package that would replace the individual on offer. The administration reluctantly agreed to do in the same manner Linton says.

The committee began to research retirement plans, starting with the AAUP's 2000 scan of Changes in Faculty Retirement Policies. None of the policies included in the overlook was as good as the informal practice that had been in place at Marymount Manhattan, in Linton's estimation. in this way the committee devised its hold plan, carefully assessing its implications for the college's pack and curriculum and the replacement of retirees.

The recent plan includes full medical benefits that continue after faculty become eligible for Medicare. It permits faculty to phase not at home of their workload over single in kind two, or three years, during which time they will receive half pay for a half load, plus additional compensation based upon 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 for aye seen," Linton says.

He notes that in advocating the plan among administrators, faculty leaders "pointed abroad 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 sum of two units semesters in advance of an impending retirement, allowing the administration to avoid last-minute scrambling to secrete classes and fill open positions.

When faculty leaders not awayed the new plan to faculty, they approved it unanimously. The administration later beg fored 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 forward the surge in AAUP membership that occurr during the plan's progression in a continuously ascending gradation 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 forward campus. "We have really cause to deviateed a corner in labor-management relations at our college" he says.

-WM

Julie M Schmid and Wendi Maloney contributed to AAUP at Work.

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