At the December 15, 2020 Emergency Union meeting, University President Richard Helldobler was given a platform to reiterate the logic behind his push for extensive faculty and staff layoffs at William Paterson. While WPU’s financial concerns are legitimate, significant restructuring will have a negative effect on our mission, similar to what is happening at other small, public institutions as discussed in this piece from the NY Times. In the meeting, we were pleased to hear that our local–as well as the Council of New Jersey State College Locals–plans to fight the layoffs, but it is still unclear how or when that fight will take place.
We understand that the specifics of strategic mobilization plans cannot be revealed publicly, but we urge the union to begin a public campaign NOW before it is too late. Union members are ready to fight!
As we wrote in an earlier post, the University Administration continues to state that the layoff decisions will be “data driven,” but the entire method of analyzing the data needs to be reviewed. Many of our questions remain unanswered, and we are anticipating receiving initial notices of possible layoffs within the month.
Unanswered Questions:
- Why did President Helldobler agree to accept a raise from the Board of Trustees while he is in the midst of laying off significant numbers of faculty and staff?
- Why are we accepting the Administration’s formulation of which data should be used and how it should be analyzed (years selected, measures, etc.)? Many faculty have expertise in data analysis, and the following issues have been raised by union members:
- We frequently hear that salaries are the largest portion of the budget, but the available data does not break that information down into faculty and staff salaries as opposed to administrator salaries. Our union has asked for that breakdown in the past. When will it be shared with the broader university community?
- Available public data on the WPU website indicates that Administrative positions have grown by 16% over the last 10 years. Why does President Helldobler continue to suggest that the Admin has not grown?
- Some of the budget issues we face are temporary (e.g. lost dorm money from pandemic). Which budget savings measures address long term vs. short term deficits?
- According to the operating budget charts on the WPU website, the second largest area of expenditure after Academic Affairs is Administration & Finance ($44.4M, 19%). What specific cost-saving measures are being implemented in that area?
- It is unclear how NTTPs are being counted as the President stated they are not included in layoffs. We were told that NTTPs were included in the data as presented by the Provost. If they are not being considered for layoffs since they can be non-reappointed, then the data needs to be re-analyzed without including them.
- President Helldobler has cited other schools in other states that are going through layoffs and “rightsizing.” What are activists and unions doing at other schools to push back against layoffs?
- How can we reach the Board of Trustees to explain that these layoffs may appear to be a cost-saving venture, but in reality they will decimate the quality of education at WPU and will likely have a negative impact on our current high rating on the social mobility index?
- If enrollment is not as good as expected, how is the enrollment team being held accountable?
- Given the positive trend in WP Online, isn’t it premature to layoff faculty and staff who are capable of/interested in doing more remote teaching? How will that be factored into the decision-making?
- What are the specific measures that will be used to demonstrate mastery of the skills they plan to assess faculty based on? What are the specific technological and cultural skills?
- How will we continue to serve our student body so that they are successful (a population hit hard by the pandemic) with far fewer FT faculty than we have now?
- What do institutions that have successful retention rates have in common that we don’t? What is their competitive advantage?
- The President presided over the layoffs of 180 employees at his previous institution. Were those people faculty, staff, or administrators?
- Can we defer the capital investments in 1800 Valley Road to save student-facing faculty jobs?
Solidarity Caucus 