A building on the Lane Community College campus in an undated photo.
Chris Lehman / KLCC
Lane Community College announced Friday that it will offer incentives to some longtime employees who volunteer to leave or retire.
The college shared the news in two emails to its workers Friday morning, saying it had reached agreements with its classified and faculty unions.
Employees in the program could leave LCC as late as the end of the next year, according to the timeline included in the emails.
But the college said workers who want to participate must commit by the end of next month.
In exchange, eligible workers could choose between an extension of their healthcare coverage or a lump sum of money totaling as much as $18,000 for contracted faculty.
The announcement comes after the LCC Board of Education voted earlier this year to cut about $4.2 million from this year’s budget.
The deals are a piece of the college’s ongoing efforts to lower its costs, college spokesperson Jenna McCulley told KLCC in an email Friday.
“Essentially it is part of the work associated with the three-year financial mitigation planning that the board approved last year,” she said. “The college still needs to reduce its overall general operating budget over the next two years.”
In an email to KLCC, faculty union president Adrienne Mitchell said this agreement is similar to deals they made with the college in 2022 and 2023.
She said they can provide certainty about future staffing levels and make the budget more predictable.
“This helps with planning and can also prevent future layoffs and any potential program cuts that could negatively impact students and the community,” Mitchell said.
The deal only applies to classified employees who’ve worked at the college full-time for at least a decade. For contracted faculty to be included, they have to have been hired more than six years ago, and currently work more than half-time.
According to LCC, faculty who join the program won’t be able to get unemployment insurance benefits from the college.
LCC’s classified employees union didn’t immediately respond to KLCC’s request for comment.
Lane Community College holds the license for KLCC but has no part in KLCC’s editorial process and does not review news content before publication. Some of KLCC’s staff members are also in the classified union. This story was edited by an outside editor from the Northwest News Network.
Nathan Wilk is a reporter with KLCC. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.
