About 500 of Cal State San Marcos' nonteaching employees will take two unpaid days off each month for the next year and most campus operations will be closed on those days, under a furlough plan that campus officials unveiled this week.
The university's roughly 625 faculty members each will work two days fewer a month without pay, as well.
The union that represents faculty, the California Faculty Association, agreed to a deal that calls for the extra days off to fall on individual professors' and lecturers' "instructional days."
Sociology professor Don Barrett, who is president of the faculty union's CSUSM chapter, said that essentially means instructors will each cancel two of their classes every month.
Students will not get a pass on learning those days, he said. Instead, they will be assigned extra educational projects or other work designed to further their understanding of a particular subject, Barrett said.
Whether the assignments will have any real benefit is likely to vary from person to person, he said.
"Students are going to have to work more independently," Barrett said. "Some welcome that and do it very well. And some don't."
University officials said the furloughs will cut both the university's salary costs and employee salaries by about 10 percent. The total amount that CSUSM spends on salaries each month was not available Thursday.
The local campus did not seek the furloughs, which are temporary. Instead, they were included in a package of cuts that the entire CSU system's Board of Trustees ordered last week to address a budget shortfall of $564 million for the 2009-10 academic year.
The deficit is the result of funding cuts by the state, which is struggling to close a $26.3 billion budget gap of its own.
The trustees chose work furloughs over pay cuts or layoffs after the vast majority of CSU employees voted to support that option. Individual CSU campuses decided for themselves how they would implement the furloughs.
The plan unveiled by San Marcos campus officials this week does not affect employees in the university's police department, student housing and a small number of food operations because those services were considered vital, officials said.
Members of three unions representing small groups of employees also are unaffected by the plan because they are still negotiating deals with the university.
Those employee groups include plumbers, electricians and other tradesmen, the university's police officers, and student employees.
All other administrative offices and the campus's Kellogg Library will be closed two days a month, according to a schedule that kicks in Saturday and runs through June 2010. The same campus operations will also be shut down two additional days in November.
Students will not be able to get computer help, request copies of transcripts, or obtain other services provided by the offices on the furlough days.
The furloughs are the first in the university's 20-year history. CSUSM human resources director Ellen Cardoso said that has left department managers unsure of what repercussions they can expect as employees juggle their workloads around the furlough days and deal with lower paychecks.
So far, her office has received relatively few phone calls from employees who will be affected, she said.
"Some employees who can financially afford it (are) looking forward to having the additional time off," Cardoso said. "But after people get their first paycheck, we anticipate that we're going to hear from people."
Barrett said faculty members are frustrated by the furloughs because they already feel underpaid and expect the plan to increase their workload.
The frustration is sparking political activism aimed at emphasizing the link between taxes and education, he said.
Viviana Leyte, an administrative assistant in the office of Cal State San Marcos President Karen Haynes, said the furloughs will force her to budget better and prioritize her job duties. She said she supports the plan, though, because the temporary fix seemed better than permanent pay cuts or layoffs.
Lourdes Shahamiri, a catalog and curriculum coordinator in the university's academic affairs office, has worked for the university for 17 years. She said the furlough plan is forcing her and her husband to reconsider how they handle their 11-year-old daughter's day care.
At the same time, Shahamiri said, she is proud that her own and fellow employees' decision to support the furloughs created something good out of a bad situation.
"That is that we prefer to take a pay cut than to see our colleagues be laid off," she said. "That is very important -- to stand together."
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