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The Daily Tar Heel

University should be local" state employer of choice

TO THE EDITOR:

I am writing in reference to your Sept. 4 article (""Employees voice concerns at Forum"") regarding the employee forum's concerns about the UNC system's proposal for a substantially equivalent personnel system for university employees.

The system-wide Human Resources Task Force" as well as many administrators on this campus — myself included — are strongly in favor of the proposal to provide university-specific personnel programs that would be more responsive to and supportive of the needs of higher education.

As a university we are working collaboratively with General Administration and our sister institutions because of our belief that this system would greatly improve our ability to recruit and retain a talented motivated and productive workforce through the introduction of improved benefits and programs.

While I respect the opinions voiced at the forum meeting I believe that there is still room for greater appreciation and understanding of the possibilities that this legislation would provide for Carolina's employees.

Having this personnel flexibility would not cause employees to lose benefits; instead it would allow us to provide compensation and benefits for university employees that we cannot currently consider due to statutory restrictions. For example in the past we have wanted to provide additional funding to improve employee benefits but could not do so due to these restrictions.

Some of the areas that this legislation would open for new consideration could be recruitment retention and performance bonuses as well as additional compensation flexibility. It would also allow us to consider changes to health insurance coverage and retirement contributions as well as vacation leave.

To address one additional point I have no reason to believe that the UNC system has any plans to take away any existing employee property rights or protections — in fact the proposed legislation does not allow these rights to be taken away. We would strongly resist any suggestion that this be considered.

Our emphasis as a university is to be the employer of choice — locally regionally and nationally. Having the ability to provide university-specific personnel programs — as recommended by the system-wide task force — is an important step toward achieving this goal.



Brenda Malone

Associate Vice Chancellor for Human Resources


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