Letter

To the editor:

It is disingenuous for the university to claim exempt employees were paid for Dec. 31 (Chronicle, Jan. 21, Page 6) and inappropriate to suggest the university is being generous by not reducing exempt pay in the second half of the fiscal year. I believe exempt employees were not paid for Dec. 31. The university's explanation amounts to accounting legerdemain relating to fiscal years, annual salaries and accrual versus cost basis bookkeeping and not to employees' actual pay.

In practice, exempt employees were not paid on an annual salary basis in the legacy system. They were paid for exactly 14/365 of their stated annual salary every two weeks. They received pay for 364 days over 26 pay periods and did not receive their annual salary in any fiscal year. In the P2K pay system, exempt staff are paid a true annual salary that for convenience is divided into 24 equal payments distributed about the middle and end of each month.

There is a distinct difference in philosophy between the two pay systems. The P2K philosophy is indeed more accurate and correct. However, it starts on Jan. 1. The legacy system ended on Dec. 30. Dec. 31 was not explicitly included in either pay system.

--Joel Zumoff
Olin Library

Editor's note: A Payroll Office discussion of this issue can be found at the web page http://www.univco.cornell.edu/payroll/IOAS.html.