UC employee calls out trustees

Dear Editor:

In the Monday, Feb. 1, News Record, I read the news story “UC approves new position,” referencing the newly created executive vice president appointment. This announcement of this job, complete with a starting salary and vague job description, came at the same meeting in which the Board of Trustees reluctantly approved a contract for the public safety guards and emergency dispatch employees. The trustees gave these employees a one-time increase of 2 percent of their pay for one year of a three-year contract. This increase is equivalent to approximately $500 to $600 increase in the total spanning the three-year period. 

These employees’ pay will remain unchanged in the last two years of their contract. The trustees said the 2 percent was too much of an increase; this is the only contract that has been settled in the last 1.5 years.

The other three unions at UC have all been offered no pay increases each year for the next three years, along with increased cost to the employees for their health care benefits. Each employee will pay more for their health care and receive no increase in their pay to balance it out. 

Each employee group has been told this hard stance by the trustees is due to UC’s budget crisis and the short fall of UC’s revenues; yet, somehow the trustees found $230,000 to create Mr. Reynold’s new position. Before coach Kelly left UC for Notre Dame, the trustees found another $1 million to entice him.

The trustees have found $10 million to build a practice field for the athletics program, which we now know is in the red and continuing to lose money. Meanwhile, professors — the basis for a university — are reduced, faculty support  is  reduced, maintenance staff has been reduced, the parking department’s budget is cut and the janitors to keep UC clean are laid off. The real employees at UC have been reduced by as much as 15 percent, all of this occurring while UC’s last two freshmen classes are the largest in university history.

What message are the trustees sending to the UC community? UC apparently has $230,000 plus the cost of benefits for this position to be created, but no money for the professors, staff, the facilities or the housekeepers?

At what cost does this come, when the best faculty and staff are no longer at the university due to budget and pay cuts? At what cost, when buildings  are in real need of repair or remodeling, but can’t get funded? Instead, a new practice field can be built, and in
record time.

I would suggest that the trustees and President Greg Williams take evaluate the message they send. They need to tell all current employees and all students attending, or considering, UC, that each is not only welcome, but valued for the role each plays in the UC’s academic success, and as a place desired to work, learn and live. Based on the single finalized contract for public safety, and the remaining three contracts offered, the opportunity to lose money in increased health care payments and no increase in pay, the message appears to be that none of us matter.

Sincerely,
Lou Grieco
Facilities Management