As Election Day nears, controversy has emerged regarding the University's policy concerning employees' work at the polls. While the University maintains that its policy allows employees to work the polls and simply prevents double-dipping in state funds, Charlottesville General Registrar Sheri Iachetta said the policy is unfair and adversely affecting her efforts to enlist poll workers.
According to Susan Carkeek, vice president and chief human resources officer at the University, when employees at private businesses take time off to volunteer on Election Day, they are paid $10.12 an hour by the state in order to compensate for the time they miss at work. Yet because the University is a state university, employees are provided with the opportunity to take civic leave, so poll workers would then receive both their regular pay for the day and the poll payment the state provides, Carkeek said. Since University employees working the polls receive their normal pay for civic leave, the University has asked that they give the $10.12 an hour they receive from the state back to the University, Carkeek said. Employees can also opt to use paid vacation leave instead and keep the money they make at the polls.
Iachetta, however, said "the University is wrong."
According to Iachetta, this policy is unfair for those choosing to take civic leave rather then vacation time. Normally, a University employee would work for eight hours on Grounds, yet employees taking paid civic leave are required to reimburse the University for the 16 hours of pay they may make at the polls.
Furthermore, Iachetta alleges that asking employees to take vacation time if they wish to keep the money they make violates Virginia law.
"The law specifically says that 'you shall not be penalized by giving up vacation time or leave time to work at the polls,'" Iachetta said.
She added she believes that University employees should not have to choose between taking leave and giving up the check the state provides them.
According to Carkeek, the University provides a kind of leave especially designed for civic duty, so employees are not losing vacation time when they volunteer on Election Day.
"This is state policy we are following -- it's not just the University of Virginia," Carkeek said. "From the University's perspective we are supporting community service by paying for it, in the private sector they are being supported by being allowed to take time off."
Carkeek added that "in the years that people that can remember" the University has only had one complaint about the policy. She said she believes that most of the employees understand the policy.
Iachetta said she is concerned that the policy will keep some University employees from volunteering at the polls.
Officials from the Attorney General's office would not comment on the situation citing their attorney-client relationship with the University, according to Attorney General spokesman J. Tucker Martin.
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