HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — The 22% pay adjustment to the General Pay Plan is proving to be difficult to implement at the Research Corporation of the University of Guam. It said some employees won’t see the raise for another two years.
The Research Corporation aligned itself on Friday with the university’s pay scale with the adoption of Resolution 23-05, which is in line with the General Pay Plan the board adopted on June 6 for classified staff and eligible employees under Public law 37-3.
“It’s (the Research Corporation’s) wish to align with the University of Guam’s pay scale for consistency and so we can recruit, retain and compensate qualified personnel to fill grant funded positions for those projects managed by (the Research Corporation) and since it’s allowed under public law for those employees who are federally funded to receive the fund increase, (Research Corporation) employees are eligible based on availability of funding,” Cathleen Moore-Linn, executive director of the Research Corporation, told the Board of Trustees Friday.
But Moore-Linn explained that meant some employees won’t see the raise anytime soon.
“What that means is we want to adopt a scale and we want to make the change effective Monday. The caveat is that not every single grant has the funding to support these raises,” she said.
The Research Corporation will have to go project to project to assess funding availability.
“It’s going to be a little messy, it’s going to be a little muddy. For example, Bob Barbara called me earlier this week and said, ‘Cathleen, I don’t have funding in this grant.’ I said, OK you need to write me a memo to state that your employees will not receive the increase. But when the new budget cycle comes in or grant cycle comes in then that would be aligned with the new pay scale,” Moore-Linn said.
It may be two years before all employees are on the same pay scale.
“We want to make sure that every person on the same funding source gets the same adjustment whether that’s nothing at the moment or 22%. There’s no picking and choosing among employees in the same grant project,” Moore-Linn said.
Some workers ineligible
But that’s as far as equitability goes. Thomas Krise, UOG president, stressed there are five different classes of employees at the university, but the law only provides the 22% raise for those who are classified or that are 100% federally funded employees.
“This leaves out all the other employees that are not in one of those categories. We have a number of instances where two people are doing the same job in a different category. One of them is getting a 22% raise and the other is not,” Krise said.
He added that there has been “general confusion and unhappiness” centered around the pay raise plan.
Not possible
Moore-Linn shared a conversation she had with Carlos Taitano, UOG’s Global Learning and Engagement director, and noted that “his push was everybody should be given a raise at the same time and it should be Oct. 1.”
She said that isn’t possible.
“All of these grants have different start dates at different times of the year. We will never be able to do 100% and get everybody on this 22% increase at the same time on the same day. … Remember this is all soft money; some of these jobs are short-term,” she said.
Anthony Camacho, the university’s general counsel, said the resolution makes the implementation of the raise discretionary, based on each grant program’s ability to fund the increase.
Adopted unanimously, Resolution 23-05 will implemented on Monday.
“All new hires coming aboard will be on that new pay plan. We really tried to look at multiple ways to approach this and it really comes down to grants (that) will be able to support these increases now or won’t be able to support it now, but they will in the future when the funding becomes available,” Moore-Linn said.
The Research Corporation of the University of Guam won’t be able to apply 22% General Pay Plan adjustment across the board for federally funded employees. Implementation will depend on funds availability by grant programs.
