BishopAccountability.org
	1,500 Workers in L.I. Diocese Will Receive Buyout Offers By Paul Vitello The New York Times January 26, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/nyregion/27diocese.html [letter from Bishop Murphy] The Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre plans to offer buyouts to 1,500 of its 6,000 employees next month as part of a cost-cutting plan to save its schools and parishes amid stagnant revenue and rising demand for charitable services, church officials said Tuesday. Officials would not say how many jobs they ultimately planned to eliminate in the sprawling Long Island diocese, which has 1.3 million Catholics in 133 parishes across Nassau and Suffolk Counties. They said that many of the jobs cut would be parish-level positions like outreach workers, maintenance staff, nonunionized elementary school teachers and parish administrators, while about 50 jobs would be created at diocesan headquarters in Rockville Centre for a new Office of Parish Administrative Services. The office will consolidate many of the purchasing, accounting and other management functions now handled separately by each parish, officials said. News of the buyouts and reorganization was first reported Tuesday in Newsday. In a letter to parishioners posted Jan. 13 on the diocesan newspaper’s Web site, Bishop William F. Murphy seemed to prepare parishioners for the announcement. “Generous as you have been and continue to be, today the expenses associated with the ministries and services we provide,” exceed the donations that “you, as good stewards, make,” the bishop wrote. Along with rising expenses for personnel benefits and building maintenance, he wrote, the diocese has “seen a steady increase in demand for many of the church’s services” while donations have remained level. The diocese imposed a salary freeze on all employees in 2009. Last June, it hired Charles Trunz III, a retired Wall Street executive, to help plan cost savings, naming him the diocese’s chief operating officer. Mr. Trunz said that although about half the diocese’s parishes were operating at a deficit, the reorganization plan does not call for closing or consolidating any parishes, or any of the diocese’s three high schools and 53 parochial schools. “Clearly what we have tried to do is make it possible for the diocese to accumulate a surplus, so that we can keep our schools and parishes open,” he said. Mr. Trunz met Monday with about 200 parish managers. He said the buyout offers would provide six or nine months of salary, depending on years of service, plus six months of health insurance coverage, “which I think is very generous.” A spokesman for unionized employees could not be reached for comment.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.