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FacFAQs: Sabbatical Policy vs. Contract

Realizing she may never get timely information from her campus Human Resources office, Nora, a 9-month Instructional faculty member at ‘Āhinahina Community College, has decided to start researching Sabbatical information online herself. She noticed a discrepancy between policy and the UHPA faculty contract.

She discovers that Policy A9.400 states that faculty must return to service at UH for one year, with item 6 stating that “Employees who fail to return to service subsequent to a sabbatical leave or who do not complete one year of service subsequent to a sabbatical leave are required to reimburse the University all compensation received during the leave period,” and that faculty must sign a statement acknowledging this. Clearly, based on this policy, the return service must be one year regardless of the duration of the Sabbatical.

However, if the sabbatical leave period is only 6 months, the current contract only requires a return service requirement of 6 months.

Nora is puzzled. Which is correct?

 

Answer:
Thankfully, the UH administration is currently in the process of updating the Administrative Procedures, after working on the Board of Regents policies and the Executive Policies.  As it pertains to any policy issued by the administration or the BOR, the substance is always subject to the language of the collective bargaining agreement (i.e., the UHPA/BOR Agreement takes precedence when there is any conflict of “discrepancy.”)  In this particular case regarding sabbatical leave, it was more than a decade ago that UHPA negotiated the change from BOR policy currently in the contract so that the obligation to return was for not more than period of the leave.  The administrative policies simply haven’t caught up yet.