On October 15th, ninety-four non-tenure track faculty received notices of layoff. Of these ninety-four, seventy-five are non-tenure track faculty with continuous appointment, and the remaining nineteen are either non-tenure track, continuous appointment eligible faculty still in their probationary periods, or fixed-term faculty.
The PSU-AAUP collective bargaining agreement demands that non-tenure track faculty with continuous appointment are offered a sixty-day notice of layoff prior to an official termination letter, if the termination is based on needed programmatic or curricular changes. Yet, Faculty Senate has yet to see or review any proposed programmatic or curricular changes that would necessitate these layoffs.
This contract provision, which the Cudd Administration sought to undercut, is an important facet of our working conditions. Given the academic job market members should have as much notice as possible if their jobs are in jeopardy. Our contract, and this notice provision, was bargained by members and ratified by members.
It is imperative that you and your workers fight against these senseless cuts. While Administration asserts an $18 million budget deficit, yet Howard Bunsis’s financial analysis of PSU shows that the University is in good financial health. Administration is solely responsible for these supposed budget woes. Administration’s budget pessimism, inability to strategize to grow PSU enrollment, and insistence that their budget priorities revitalize downtown rather than provide quality education for our students, are the reason you and your co-workers received notices of layoff; it is not an actual budget crisis.
All the while, Administration asserts that “no decisions have yet been made.” Administration’s lack of successful enrollment strategies, inability to support students by fully staffing student services, and slicing and dicing this university only diminishes quality education for our students. It cannot cut its way to “fiscal sustainability.” Rather, Administration pretends that shared governance will be followed, much like the farce of shared governance PSU-AAUP and Faculty Senate noted during the 2021 Program Review and Reduction Process.
At the bargaining table on Thursday, the PSU-AAUP Bargaining Team pressed administration with questions to which they could not provide any answers. You and your co-workers deserve answers to the following questions.
Questions posed to Admin at the bargaining table about layoffs
Data on layoff decision-making
- What criteria did you use to make the decision on NTTF layoffs?
- At what level was that decision made: Unit? School / College / Program? OAA?
- What factors and data did you consider when determining how much each school, college, or program needed to cut?
Data on program change process
NTTF notices indicated that people are going to be laid off “due to a change in curricular needs or programmatic requirements made in accordance with applicable shared governance procedures.”
- Which programs do you intend to cut?
- What curricular changes are you planning to make?
- How did you determine that these programs needed to be cut or changed?
Data on program change timeline and budgetary impact
- What is your timeline for starting and completing the shared governance processes that you must complete in order to eliminate a program or change the curriculum?
- Have you contacted any of the community partners that will be impacted by these programmatic or curricular changes?
- How much revenue will PSU lose if these programs are eliminated?
Additional impacts
- How many administrators will be cut?
- How many APs will be cut this FY?
- How much money are they paying the consultancy that is looking at the “operational excellence” balloon?
- How will the remaining faculty and staff take on the additional work remaining from the laid off faculty/staff?
- Will AAUP work be distributed to non-AAUP workers?
- How many courses are under-enrolled (recognizing not all class sizes are the same)?
- Affect students’ ability to finish their degrees on schedule/time?
- Impact quality of education for students?
- How will reduced offerings affect enrollment?
- Rationale for non-contractually obligated notice to notice?