The fact that no goal has been stated has worried current staff, who are now weighing the risks of potential layoffs against continued employment at the school.
Jaeger said he would be concerned if fear of layoffs pressured workers to participate in the severance package, but said he has not noticed this among the union members.
Yet not all HMS staff members have taken the proposal in stride.
Richard M. Pendleton, a unionized employee at Countway, said he has observed a “general kind of uptightness and a sense of nervousness” from his colleagues.
Buehrens said he was sympathetic to the employees’ concerns, but said he thought that the severance package was the most “reasonable and humane and respectful” way to administer some necessary budget cuts.
Buehrens cited a slow year at the National Institute of Health—which funds many HMS grants—and its reluctance to pay for new labs and new faculty as reasons for the severance program’s launch.
But people whose salaries are paid for by grants and “soft money” contributions are not eligible for the program, according to the informational packet sent to employees.
The packet also stipulated that in order to be eligible, one must complete seven years of HMS service by December 31, 2004. The longer one’s tenure at the school, the more lucrative the severance package will be—the most senior employees could continue to receive their regular salaries for over two years.
Despite the fact that these provisions leave only 213 eligible employees, Buerhens remains optimistic that the measure will help close the budget gap before it becomes a problem.
“We don’t expect that those [deficit] projections will come true because we’re going to solve the problem,” he said. “We’re not going to run a deficit, when all is said and done.”
Frankel said that financial woes should be secondary to the school’s productivity, which she said will suffer with the departure of senior employees.
“What they’re doing by offering a package like this is inviting people to leave who have institutional knowledge, and that bothers me,” she said. “People who care about the place will leave.”
According to Frankel, the Medical School has given departments permission to hire temporary workers, but Beuhrens said that they will be used sparingly if the work review groups operate efficiently.
“We’re making every effort to structure the review process so that it can function as quickly as possible, so that we can target priority areas,” he said. “There are certain activities that we can’t allow to lapse for any amount of time.”
—Staff writer Leon Neyfakh can be reached at neyfakh@fas.harvard.edu.