Layoffs at the University of Minnesota: Chop from the top or cut the roots?

In the wake of Tim Pawlenty's multi-million dollar budget cut, University of Minnesota president Bob Bruininks has announced that 1,240 university jobs will be eliminated.  Although this includes positions that won't be filled when employees retire or leave, approximately 600 workers will be laid off. The 1,240 vanished positions represent five percent of the university workforce.  Combined with a wage freeze and substantial cuts to the Regents' Scholarship program, these cuts mean that frontline staff at the U are doing more work for less money with no end in sight.

Wages may be frozen but health care costs and the cost of living continue to rise, leaving those lucky enough to be employed stuck with what is essentially a pay cut.
And the reduction in staff means that existing work is divided up among the remaining employees--a de facto speedup. "When front line workers are laid off the work remains—it doesn’t just disappear—someone has to do it," said law school employee and AFSCME Local 3800 president Phyllis Walker, testifying before the university Board of Regents on June 17, 2009.

Employees also face cuts in benefits. The Regents' Scholarship, which guaranteed university employees free tuition, has been reduced to a a 75% benefit for graduate work and a 90% benefit for undergraduate study.  For a single undergraduate course, the per credit cost will be  $160; for single graduate course, $650.  Testifying before the Board of Regents, AFSCME member Kem Tae Lynch compared her situation to that of a higher-paid administrator: " For someone making $70,000, $650 — or 25 percent of the cost of a three credit graduate course — is a manageable expense. For me, $650 is $100 less than my biweekly paycheck."    Seventy percent of workers using the Regents' Scholarship are not faculty or professional & administrative employees.  The benefit is overwhelmingly used by the lowest-paid of the university employees

In the background are fifteen years of change in the composition of the university's work force. AFSCME--the American Federation of State, Council and Municipal Employees--unionized the clerical, medical and technical workers at the university in 1993. At that time, there were 3,200 union jobs at the U.  Now there are 1600.  Since the union was formed, non-union Professional and Administrative positions have mushroomed from a few hundred to approximately 4,000.  Although the reasons for this shift are opaque, it seems clear that the university administration has chosen to create non-union positions while union and civil service jobs have been phased out. 

What effects will layoffs have on the Minnesota economy as a whole? The university is the third largest public employer in Minnesota.  "The hardest hit will be out-state campus communities—Crookston & Morris—and where Minnesota Extension Service offices are located, where U jobs literally keep the economy going," said Mary Lou Middleton, 25-year clerical worker and vice president of AFSCME Local 3800.

The University's budget situation has been framed as a choice between layoffs and tuition increases, as if students and staff need to fight each other for slices of a shrinking pie.  To what degree is this true?  254 University employees make over $200,000--including President Bruininks, who makes $450,000 a year with an additional $300,000 in benefits.   " If they took a 5% pay cut, the U would save over 3 million dollars.  If those making over $300,000 took an  additional 5% decrease and those making over $400,000 took an additional 5% decrease, over $800,000 would be saved.  That’s a total of over $4 million," said Walker.  Unlikely?  Perhaps, but not all administrators see things that way--the dean of the College of Art and Design and four other Art and Design administrators have taken voluntary ten-percent pay cuts.