University administrators are seeking the “flexibility” to furlough employees by asking the Board of Regents to approve a new clause in employment contracts, Provost Arnett Mace said Wednesday.

“We are asking the Board of Regents to include language [permitting furloughs] in contracts just in case we would need to exercise that [power],” said Mace, provost and senior vice president of academic affairs, in a phone interview. The Regents will decide on the changes by April 15, he said, and the new contracts would be issued beginning mid-June.

“Certainly no decision has been made relative to whether we will or will not be implementing furloughs until we have our total budget,” Mace said. “We simply want to have that flexibility should we need that flexibility.”

He said the economic crisis prompted the administration’s push for increased flexibility in employee contracts.

“If all employees were furloughed for one day, the University would save about $2.5 million,” Mace said.

Mace met with several faculty members Wednesday morning to discuss the possible changes.

“[Mace] told [faculty] it was kind of a last resort policy,” said Michael Castengera, a senior lecturer in the Department of Telecommunications, who attended the meeting. “The point he made is that furloughing is a better alternative than layoffs. The hard part is to do it in such a way so that it doesn’t penalize the students.”

Tom Hudson, a senior lecturer in the Department of Journalism, said he was teaching a class during Mace’s address to faculty.

After hearing the news, he said, “It’s disappointing. It’s unfortunate that the administration feels it needs to install such wording in contracts after going through all these years without it.”

Hudson, who has worked for the University for more than 15 years, said changes to faculty contracts may affect the University’s quality of education.

“In the long term, if faculty feel this is not a good place to teach because they have a lack of guarantee in their contracts, they are going to search for other institutions to be teaching at, and of course that will impact students,” he said. “The best teachers will always go to the best places and if Georgia cannot keep pace then they will go elsewhere.”

Tenured faculty are protected from furloughs by their current contracts with the University. Contracts are preserved by a provision requiring the University System to declare a state of exigency, or emergency, before issuing any alterations. But at the start of each fiscal year, before UGA employees re-sign their contracts, administrators can implement changes – with Regents approval – without declaring exigency. That is the provision under which administrators are considering the new clause, just three months before the System’s fiscal year begins on July 1.

Hudson speculated the Faculty Affairs subcommittee of University Council would approach the issue, and may shed light on the negative impacts of contract changes.

“There will be lots of discussion within departments and between departments on what is actually intended here and what might be the consequences of writing and signing these kinds of things,” he said

Mace said he did not want to speak on the exact language of the clause, which has not yet been finalized.

“We will not make any decisions relative to any of this until we know our budget in early part of May,” he said.