Correction appended
Since the College's controversial budget cuts which included layoffs of Dartmouth employees and spurred a subsequent student backlash Dartmouth has rehired 22 percent of the employees previously laid off during the two-year period, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Steve Kadish said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Six of the 40 employees laid off in fiscal year 2010 and 16 of the 60 employees laid off in fiscal year 2009 have since been rehired by the College, Kadish said.
Not all the employees who were rehired are employed in the same positions or work the same number of hours as they previously did at the College, according to Earl Sweet, Service Employees International Union Local 560 President. Some of the employees who were rehired were placed in part-time positions and might earn lower salaries than they did previously, Sweet said.
The rehired employees enjoy the same benefits afforded to all Dartmouth employees, according to Kadish.
Following the layoffs, "rehiring was a priority and we've done that whenever possible," Justin Anderson, director of media relations for the College, said.
The layoffs were part of an overall plan to close the budget gap facing the College that also included voluntary retirements, changes to the College's health care benefits to employees and the elimination of the death benefit to employees, The Dartmouth previously reported.
Seventy-eight employees in fiscal year 2009 and "between 105 and 110" employees in fiscal year 2010 volunteered to retire early, according to Kadish. In 2009, 54 employees also agreed to reduce the number of hours they worked, he said.
The College has been able to close 85 percent of the estimated budget gap for fiscal year 2011, Kadish said. A significant portion of the reductions resulted from changes to the College's health care plan, which will save the College between $9 million and $10 million per year, according to Kadish.
In a Dec. 22 interview with WCAX News, College President Jim Yong Kim said that the College's goal in addressing the budget gap was to do everything possible to "make those cuts [necessary to close the gap] without forcing people to be laid off from Dartmouth College" and that, overall, the College has been "very successful" in achieving this goal.
Kadish said that the College attempted to avoid firing employees, and described the relatively small number of layoffs in comparison with the approximately 3,200 employees at Dartmouth as "remarkable."
"We really did make every effort possible to minimize the impact on our employees while at the same time addressing quite a large budget gap," Kadish said.
Sweet said that the layoffs were unnecessary to the College's budget reduction process and that he did not agree with Kim's statement that every effort was made to minimize the impact on employees.
"The question is, Was there a need to do all this?'" Sweet said. "My first instinct is no. I don't think they needed to go as far as they did."
Sweet said he had "some issues with how [College officials] are portraying all this," adding that Kim failed to discuss how recent changes have impacted employees in the interview with WCAX.
Sweet specifically cited the impact on employees of the Hanover Inn who, due to the restructuring of the Inn's governance, are no longer employees of the College and therefore do not receive the benefits afforded to College employees.
Kim told WCAX that the reductions were necessary to "continue growth" and help establish Dartmouth as a major research institution. This expansion of research will not detract from the College's focus on liberal arts education and undergraduates, he added.
"We will never back off from being a great undergraduate institution," Kim said. "I know that at many institutions, undergraduates do feel that they are afterthoughts, that they get access to some teachers but their primary focus is not undergraduate education. We will never back off from that and I think that is what makes us so strong."