Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor explained the recently proposed changes to the employee benefits package at the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium Tuesday to faculty, staff and administrators. Tensions rose when discussions of family benefits came up.

Cantor sent an e-mail to university employees Friday, detailing the proposed changes in the benefit areas of retirement, education and health care. The changes resulted from the semester-long plans of the Working Group on Sustainable Benefits. Tuesday’s open forum acted as an opportunity for employees not involved with the Working Group to voice their opinions on the proposals, request changes and ask for clarification regarding the changes.

The forum began with an introduction from Cantor, which reiterated the main goals of the changes and why they are necessary. She also clarified points of contention, like why the university needed to cut benefits, as well as certain features of the benefits that were brought to her prior to the forum.

The main objective of the cuts was to support the diverse community of employees at SU, while also creating a model for which benefits may sustain themselves, Cantor said.

‘We need to be able to, over time, to add benefits as our employee base comes forth with requests,’ Cantor said. ‘So part of a sustainable benefits pool and a program is to think both about cost escalation and how you continue costs in a responsible way, but also to think about it as a dynamic portfolio that you want to be able to add to benefits.’

The proposed changes would create $7.1 million in savings. Of that, $4.1 million will be redirected into benefit enhancements, saving $3 million. The savings will be directed to the 2011 fiscal year budget, Cantor said.

The university will continue looking for other ways to manage the budget, such as cutting something out of the Network Master Plan, a five-year plan to rebuild the university’s technology network, Cantor said.

The benefits package is currently 12 percent of the unrestricted operating budget. Cuts also need to be kept down in order to keep tuition low and financial aid high, Cantor said.

Cantor pointed to the enhancements made in the employee benefits, such as including opposite-sex domestic partners in health care benefits and providing a $1,000 offset to a federal tax on same-sex domestic partner benefits, as proof that the proposal includes the whole community.

‘We have to be able to represent honorably the values we have to be an inclusive community,’ Cantor said.

The federal government imposes a tax on same-sex domestic partner benefits, causing homosexual employees to pay more for the same benefits their heterosexual peers receive, according to the original proposal. To compensate for this, the new benefits would give $1,000 to affected employees.

Pat Cihon, a professor in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, said giving a $1,000 offset to federal taxes only to same-sex domestic partners represents differential treatment and extra benefits that heterosexuals would not get.

‘Even though there may be benign motivation behind the $1,000 top-up, to the extent that we now have similarly situated employees – one in a heterosexual relationship, one in a same-sex relationship – it’s the same-sex employee differential treatment in terms of employment including compensation that is a potential issue with the United States law,’ Cihon said, eliciting both applause and disapproving stares from the rest of the audience.

Homosexual employees expressed concerns that the $1,000 is not enough to rectify the fact that they pay more for benefits than heterosexuals.

‘We’re still not made whole by this proposal,’ said Brenda Wrigley, a public relations professor. ‘And if we are an inclusive community, that has to happen.’

Cantor would only comment on the concerns raised against the same-sex domestic partner benefits by saying the issue seems be with the federal tax, and university lobbyists are working to change that.

The plan to now offer health care benefits to unmarried opposite-sex domestic partners also drew concerns. Since heterosexual couples who do not get married are exercising a choice, extending benefits to them are not the same as extending benefits to same-sex couples who cannot legally get married, Cihon said.

But changing the definition of family to include unmarried opposite-sex domestic partners falls in line with the university’s goal of being an inclusive community, Cantor said.

‘This is not a legal argument,’ Cantor said. ‘This is an argument about a statement about inclusive community.’

The issues raised will be combined with those e-mailed to the Working Group and at another open forum to be held Monday at Hendricks Chapel. The benefit changes will be further discussed at a budget meeting of University Senate March 3. The final draft will then be presented to the Board of Trustees March 11.

Other issues discussed include:

Greg Verchota, a mathematics professor, said he feels the proposals hit single-income households hardest because retirement benefits are based on salary and not household income. Cantor said retirement has never been based on household income, so the proposal changes nothing in that respect. She added that health care co-pay is based on household income.

Prudence Tompkins, who works with University College, wanted to know how the addition of a fourth tier of health care coverage would change costs. The new systems split the original middle tier of employee plus one into two tiers, employee plus spouse/domestic partner and employee plus child(ren). This is because children’s health care costs less than adult health care, Cantor said.

A question was raised about how vesting retirement benefits would affect eligible adjunct faculty. Vesting refers to the proposed act of only giving full retirement benefits after six years of employment. Cantor said that issue is one that needs to be researched further.

Christopher Tuohey, a broadcast journalism professor, asked when the university would discontinue the salary freeze. The university intends to lift the freeze in the 2011 fiscal year, Cantor said.

Mark Braiman, a chemistry professor, addressed the issue of a health savings account and the overwhelming amount of paperwork involved in requesting a co-pay refund. Increased efficiency is also a goal, and the university will take Braiman’s comments under consideration, Cantor said.

Eric Holzwarth, the deputy director of the honors program in the College of Arts and Sciences, wants to know how the proposal would affect the $2,500 given to employees to pay to send their children to other universities. That will go untouched, Cantor said.

rhkheel@syr.edu

Published on January 26, 2010 at 12:00 pm