Campus HR recently issued a statement regarding campus emergencies/pay policy (see the e-mail sent 11/19/09). I would like to clarify a couple of points made in the policy update.
The designation of ‘partial campus closure’ represents the emergency classification that has been in place for years. As such, it does not contain any change in how employees cover time off in these situations.
The designation ‘full campus closure’ is a new classification and is limited to truly catastrophic events, e.g. H1N1 epidemic affecting a high number of staff/students. The Chancellor would formally announce if a situation qualified as ‘full campus closer.’ However, even then, some campus department s would still need to operate and their staff would need to report to work, if possible, e.g., University Hospital, Energy Management, MUPD.
What we’ll need to listen for is the terminology used to describe an event, i.e., partial or full campus closer. Only the latter designation, when made by the Chancellor, will activate the compensation policies described in the e-mail from Campus HR.