While many public and private employers have a “use-it-or-lose-it” policy toward sick time, Wayne Watson will be paid for most of the 500 unused sick days he accrued before leaving the top job at Chicago’s community colleges – a perk worth $500,000, according to records obtained by the Better Government Association.
Watson already has received about $300,000 of that sum since he stepped down in 2009, and he is due to get two more annual payments of $100,000.
He was among the biggest beneficiaries of a policy that generated more than $7 million in post-employment payments for another 140 former City Colleges of Chicago employees in the past decade. City Colleges records show the system has paid those retirees at least $3 million and still owes them a total of $4.2 million.
In November, the City Colleges board, at the urging of new Chancellor Cheryl Hyman, voted to eliminate pay for unused sick days for non-union employees hired after Jan. 1.
“Under the new sick day policy, [non-union] employees will not be able to ‘cash out’ sick days at the end of employment,” City Colleges Vice Chancellor Laurent Pernot said in an email. The change was made to “save taxpayer resources,” Pernot said.
Watson now is president of Chicago State University. Asked about the $500,000 he is getting for unused sick days, he replied, “You’re asking me about three years ago and a different institution,” and he declined further comment.
Watson worked for the City Colleges for 31 years, including the last 11 as chancellor, with an annual salary of $300,000 when he retired. Under the system’s policy at the time, departing non-union employees who met certain age and service requirements were able to convert 80 percent of their unused sick time to cash, with no cap on how many days they could amass.
Under the revised policy, newly hired non-union employees can accumulate up to 200 days of sick time but are no longer allowed to cash out any of those days when they leave the college system, Pernot said.
The perk that Watson and other managers enjoyed remains in effect, however, for the unionized, rank-and-file employees of the City Colleges. Members of the Cook County College Teachers Union who were hired before July 15, 2000 still can cash out 80 percent of their unused sick days upon leaving City Colleges, if they meet certain age and service requirements. And they have no cap on the number of days they can collect. Union members hired on or after July 15, 2000, can cash out a maximum of 80 unused sick days.
The contract enshrining such benefits expires next year. In negotiations for a new union deal, City Colleges officials hope to bring the rules for all workers in line with the newly enacted policy for nonunion employees, Pernot said.
Watson only took 11.5 sick days in the last decade he was with the City Colleges and was allowed to convert some unused vacation time into sick days.
When he retired, he also was paid $37,000 for other unused vacation days that he had not converted into sick days.
Besides the $100,000-a-year payments for unused sick days, Watson gets a pension of $140,000 a year and is paid a $250,000 annual salary in his new post as Chicago State president.
In addition to Watson, at least 15 other former City Colleges administrators were owed $100,000 or more in unused sick time payments during the past decade, documents show.
Charles Guengerich, former president of Wilbur Wright College on the Northwest Side, was slated to receive $309,061 in sick time. Martin Faber, former executive director of business services at Richard J. Daley College on the Southwest Side, was expected to receive $216,973.
City Colleges has about 120,000 students at seven main campuses and an annual budget of more than $650 million.
The graduation rate – representing students who receive a two-year degree within three years – was 8 percent this past year, Pernot said. Hyman and her boss, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, have said they want to increase that figure and provide more programs that prepare students for better careers.
Patrick Rehkamp is a senior investigator with the Better Government Association. BGA intern Mari Grigaliunas contributed reporting.
No Kidding it’s a windfall. How many people can say they get $1000.00 a day to cash in if they don’t use it. I know I would be a whole lot more careful in my interaction with the public to remain healthy. What a joke. $140K a year in retirement and $500K on top of that, and the majority of those of us working in this sector can only hope to reach, 40 to 60K when we are working and much less in retirement. I hope he doesn’t also qualify for Social Security benefits that won’t be available when regular workers like myself become of age to apply for them.
It wold be interesting if the author included in the article how many sick days a year are earned. Being able to accrue even 200 seems excessive. Even if one “earns” 10/yr…that would be 20 yrs worth. It seems to me that the salaries and benefits continue to be excessive. (At that seems to be true at almost all the small schools in the Chicago area.) They are especially egregious specially for a school with such low standards/results — i.e., graduation rates. Who approvers all these salaries and benefits, other feather-bedders?
This is sickening, but not surprising. CCC is notoriously top heavy with administrators (like Watson and his ilk) and there are far more administrators than are needed while schools scrape by with fewer and fewer professors and teachers. I don’t know about the rest of the system, but Truman’s classrooms look like something out of the 60s – they’re filthy and in disrepair, with 40 or 50 year old desks and furniture. The bathrooms at Truman are truly more disgusting than the nastiest public bathroom anywhere. Instead of a diploma, the thing most Truman students are likely to walk out of that building with is a serious case of hantavirus. Of course, even at Truman the administrators and non-educational staff get it nice – they’re all in the spiffy new building with clean, light filled offices and bathrooms so clean you can practically eat in them. Mayor Emanuel can announce all the initiatives he wants, but until money is funneled away from waste and patronage and towards great teachers teaching in great environments, it will all be a waste.
Yes it is a winfall. At the same time, BGA’s stats do not take into condsideration several factors.
1. Two of three namedemloyees were also tenured faculty when they retired. Their retirements were dictated in part by long-standing union contracts.
2. Two of the three retiees with payments for unused sick days had their retirment packages approved by the current Chacelloor (retained by Mayor Emanuel) and approved by the current Board of Trustees (also appoited by the current mayor). For the current mayor to say after the fact that it is ourageous is nothing less than hypocrasy.
It is also nothing less than hypocrasy for the current mayor to question this pactice when Vice Chancellors and Associate Vice Chancellors are hired based on their connections to Rahm, Barack, Michelle, Mike and Lisa (Madigan), etc. and so forth and so on get appointed to jobs they are in no way qualified to hold. But then again, based on donations to campaigns, the are magically and mysteriously qualified. As an aside, how did the former president of Governor’s State University end up on the Board of Trustees despite a “checkered” presidency that ended in resignation end up on the CCC Board?
If Mr. More had done his homework (and BGA as well), they would have found that these practices were part of negotiated union contracts. And if if Mr. More and BGA had actually looked into CCC, they would have found worse. For instance, they would have found that the new presidents have all recieved “salary adjustments” that put their salaries at $156K (yes, $156,000) after only six months on the job and having done nothing. They may have also found that these “adjustments” did not need CCC Board approval. They may have also found that the COO may or may not live in the city as required under city rules.
“Under the new sick day policy, [non-union] employees will not be able to ‘cash out’ sick days at the end of employment,” City Colleges Vice Chancellor Laurent Pernot said in an email. The change was made to “save taxpayer resources,” Pernot said.
Saving taxpayer dollars? How much has Mr. Pernot’s salary and title ballooned since he was hired? Lok at the CCCs Board reports and you’ll see Mr. Pernot wallowing in the slop be handed out by the Chancellor (with the current mayor’s approval).