University prepares for summer four-day workweeks

Four-day workweeks - a money-saving strategy scheduled for most of the summer - begin June 2.

NIU's campus will fall mostly quiet Fridays, as an estimated 3,500 employees stay home. Only specific essential service and maintenance functions and those that normally operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, such as Public Safety, will remain in force.

Other employees will complete the required 37.5 hours a week by working from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday with abbreviated lunches from noon to 12:40 p.m.

The new schedule remains in effect through Friday, Aug. 8. One exception is the week of the Fourth of July - it falls on a Friday this summer - when normal 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. hours with 60-minute lunches make a temporary return.

"We get different feedback," said Steve Cunningham, associate vice president for administration and human resources. "It's an initiative very popular with many employees. Others have day care and logistics issues that make the schedule somehwat more difficult to adapt to. A certain number of employees really prefer a five-day schedule. Generally, it's been well accepted."

Cunningham said the decision, stemming from President John Peters' April 9 budget message to NIU employees, was made after extensive consultation with university constituencies including the Operating Staff Council, the Supportive Professional Staff Council, the University Council, the Council of Deans, the Secretarial Advisory Committee and other area representatives.

"Those meetings went quite well," he said, "especially in the context of the current budget crisis and everyone pitching in to help the university do whatever it can do to work with the crisis and, at the same time, maintain our priority of protecting people's jobs."

Commitments were made to the employee councils that behoove university supervisors to allow as much flexibility as possible with respect to employee schedules.

However, individual supervisors also are responsible for ensuring that university offices remain open during the required hours of operation and that the business needs of the university are met. The divisional vice presidents will monitor implementation of summer work schedule options within their respective areas of administration.

Employees can adjust the starting and ending times of their daily schedules within a 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. frame. Those unable to adapt to the four-day week can, with the concurrence of their supervisors, work something less than the 9.4-hour scheduled work day and use accumulated vacation time for the remainder of the day or take the time without pay.

Hourly employees are eligible for overtime pay or compensating time off if the employee works more than 9.4 hours in any one day or more than 37.5 hours in one work week. Overtime schedules are subject to supervisory approval.

Sick leave and vacation days will be earned and used on the basis of 9.4 hours per day. Exempt civil service and supportive professional staff employees will claim 1.25 days while hourly employees will claim 9.4 hours for each sick day used.

With an awareness that employees will lose 30 minutes of rest period time while working a full schedule during four days instead of five days per week, supervisors can adjust rest periods on a daily basis to allow for the additional 30 minutes. The rest period must be preceded and followed by a substantial work period. Rest periods may not be taken as late arrivals, early departures or extended lunch periods.

NIU has implemented four-day workweeks before, a couple times during the 1980s and a couple times during the early 1990s.

4-28-03