On July 21, the UNC System office released a memo granting chancellors the ability to authorize temporary salary reductions for non-faculty EHRA employees, a designation that includes senior officers of the University such as deans, provosts and chancellors.
That means for more than a month, Chancellor Guskiewicz has had the authority to redistribute six-figure salaries to departments and workers who need it. Why isn’t he using this authority?
Students working in housing are not sure if their jobs will continue now that housing contracts have been canceled. Campus workers have to use their own vacation and sick time with no additional compensation and lack of sufficient access to adequate personal protective equipment. International graduate students and workers have been furloughed while still being asked to pay higher tuition costs. Graduate workers make less than the living wage in Orange County and have no chance to save for emergencies. All while coaches, provosts, deans and chancellors make well over $100,000 each year.
Chancellor Guskiewicz has the authority to help financially precarious workers. Why doesn’t he?
Chancellor Guskiewicz, along with Provost Bob Blouin, recently discussed the financial cost to the University during the pandemic and hinted at job losses. Is the Chancellor worried? Is the provost worried? Is the dean of the graduate school worried? Probably not. After all, their jobs are not on the line. The first people the University will fire are low-paid campus workers, student workers and graduate workers.
Hell, they already fired international grad workers. They may call it a furlough, but that euphemistic language only hides the fact that callous administrators deliberately withdrew vital income from our international colleagues in the midst of a pandemic. Now, while the Chancellor spends time on public relations instead of public health, our international colleagues find themselves fired with no notice, too late to apply for fellowships, no prospects of other employment and still burdened with higher tuition costs.
Chancellor Guskiewicz can prevent further layoffs and make things right for international graduate workers. What is he waiting for? My repeated calls and emails to the Chancellor’s office have yielded the following response: “At this time, no decisions have been made regarding temporary salary reductions.”
Why the hell not?
I have to assume that Chancellor Guskiewicz would rather oversee the firing of housing, dining and grounds staff; that he would rather maintain poverty stipends for grad workers; that he would rather sacrifice all the actual people who make up the University than ask administrators to give up a portion of their six-figure salary for no more than one year.
