FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - The University of Arkansas physical plant has implemented a plan to restructure in order to reduce operating costs and to meet budget limitations.

Due to this restructuring, the U of A has made the difficult decision to release 32 Physical Plant employees. An additional 4 employees will be demoted and another 9 vacant positions will be relinquished. Layoffs will follow seniority within shops.

Today's actions will affect most areas within the department, and will reduce the department's budget by approximately $880,000 including fringe benefits.

"Our Physical Plant has been placed in a position in which we must make difficult decisions in order to come within our new operating budget," said Leo Yanda, director of the Physical Plant.

"It certainly isn't easy to let employees go. We've studied every conceivable alternative and this is the only option if we are to cover our operating expenditures involved in maintaining the campus.

"The training these employees have received makes them extremely competitive in the open job market, and will help them find new positions. A job fair will be conducted to assist them. This is a tremendous loss for our department and the campus," Yanda said.

Physical plant had 368 employees. Since funding shortages began last year, the department began allowing attrition and retirements to reduce the workforce by leaving vacant positions unfilled, including two associate director positions. This process saved approximately 15 current employees from being laid off. The loss of these workers will be felt throughout the campus in terms of availability of Physical Plant support, according to Yanda. "We hope to hire helpers later to help keep manpower up. However, these employees will not be trained in the areas of those skilled-trade-workers we are losing, and cannot be considered as replacements but as helpers," Yanda said.

Factoring into the restructuring is the growing infrastructure and hence the increasing costs of maintenance and utilities. The infrastructure has increased by 33 percent in the past 10 years, which in turn increases maintenance and utility costs. This represents approximately $850,000 in new unfunded costs to the Physical Plant this next fiscal year. An additional factor is the one percent budget cut that will go into affect July 1 for all campus departments. For the Physical Plant, this will amount to approximately $167,000.

"We've been upgrading maintenance and utilities systems for the past 10 years in an effort to allay costs, and in the past year have taken a critical look at our budget and have identified several additional areas in which we plan to restructure," Yanda said.

The increased costs not budgeted in the 1999-2000 budget for the Physical Plant are being addressed by: a review in progress of operating hours of buildings with the goal of reducing utilities costs, by elimination of unfilled positions including some administrative and support positions, by establishing satellite stations nearer campus activities to which employees report directly, additional upgrades to more efficient operating equipment in the buildings, by new measures to enforce Board of Trustees policies on use of sick leave, by eliminating jobs within the skilled trades, by freezing the apprenticeship training program, and by continuing to revise charges to more adequately reflect the cost of doing business.

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