A special committee met earlier this month to address
concerns that University of Wisconsin System faculty report less sick days than
other state employees.

The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents
committee discussed a recent audit by the Legislative Audit Bureau that
investigated the lack of sick day reporting.

UW-Stevens Point
professor Chris Sadler, who serves on the committee, said faculty are not
reporting a "significant use of colleague coverage," when a professor has
another faculty member cover when he is not able to teach.

According to the current policy, Sadler said, a
professor is not required to report a sick day if his class is covered by
another faculty member.

"What the committee recommended was ending that
part of the sick leave policy so there is still great encouragement for faculty
to cover each others' classes when they're sick," Sadler said. "When you're
sick, you will report … that you were sick, even if you have a colleague cover
your course."

Sadler said he was not sure if the current policy
caused a significant problem, citing that each year, faculty contracts cover
only the academic year, which would explain why they report fewer sick days.

"I think part of that is that more of us are on
nine month contracts, and so if you have to have something done where you need
to go to the hospital, you can lots of times schedule that over the summer when
you're not working," Sadler said.

The new policy will require faculty to report
sick days even when other faculty members cover classes.

"We're simply trying to kind of have an equitable
system for all the people who work on a campus so when a nonfaculty member is
sick, they take a sick day," Sadler said. "When a faculty member is sick, they
take a sick day and what this is going to do is it's going to more accurately
reflect the number of sick days."

UW System spokesperson David Giroux said with the
new policy clarification, the UW System will "be in a better position to
preserve these retirement benefits for all of our employees."

"There were valid concerns raised by people,
certainly some of our faculty members have concerns about … their benefits and
impact," Giroux said. "What we think we're doing here is a means of preserving
a very, very important retirement benefit in a state where our compensation
lags behind other states comparing our university campus to other university
campuses."

"These kind of fringe benefits are very valuable
and they are often things the one thing that makes us competitive in an
otherwise slanted field," Giroux added.

The clarification, Giroux said, will ultimately
show the UW System is accountable for their policies, while "at the same time
[they] preserve that competitive benefit package."

The Board of Regents will vote on the policy
change at its December meeting.