Washtenaw Community College President Halts Privatization of Part-Timers

Washtenaw Community College’s president has put the brakes on a plan to privatize part-time faculty. We wrote about Whitworth’s plan in July/August 2010. To read that piece, click here.

Larry Whitworth said Tuesday he won’t be bringing a recommendation to the board in November to transfer nearly 400 part-time faculty and staff to a private company called EDUStaff.

In late-October night, Whitworth said if he brought the proposal back to the board, it would happen in Janaury. On Wednesday after, the college’s spokeswoman, Janet Hawkins, said Whitworth has no intention of bringing the proposal to the board.

The original plan called for part-time faculty who teach in the college’s lifelong learning program and some low-level staff employees to be made employees of the private company, EDUStaff. Faculty members are hired on a per-semester basis, with no promises of a job the next semester.

Not having those employees on the payroll would mean the college wouldn’t have to pay 19.6 percent of an employee’s salary into the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System. The employees themselves wouldn’t have to pay the 6 percent of their salary they currently pay into the system.

Anticipated savings to WCC are about $1 million a year.

If the plan had gone forward, the switchover would have taken place in January.

The pilot project called for the switch to the private company to be voluntary for employees, but Whitworth said he received some “pushback” from employees who would have been impacted.

He said he’s planning to meet in the next couple weeks with the affected staff to talk about the program.

“This isn’t the kind of thing you want to just force through,” he said. “We want to make sure we go through a process and talk to people about this.”