Elisa Campbell
Last fall, as the press widely reported declining tax revenues and the state's increasingly dire financial straits, the Governor, the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate played their power games and didn't get a budget passed until almost halfway through the fiscal year. In the meantime, the people running state agencies seemed to be in denial. The general practice during budget battles, when life goes on and agencies have to function, is to spend at the rate of the previous year's budget. For the most part, that's what agencies did. For example, in the University, where I work, although some positions that became vacant were not filled, money was spent on new buildings, office renovations, new furniture, equipment, etc.
When the legislature finally passed a budget, and it was in fact much smaller than the previous year's, howls of pain went up throughout the land. "You can't do this halfway through the year! The cuts will really have to be draconian because we have to cut 5% of our budget in only half the time, which means it's practically a 10% cut."
At the time, I asked myself what we were paying these managers for, since they didn't seem to be "managing." Then I reminded myself of the realities of departmental budgets: anyone who reveals, whether out of conscientiousness or foolishness, that she or he has something that could be considered "extra money" knows that it will be snatched up immediately, thrown into the general pot, and never seen again. Nor will such a person be regarded as noble or a good manager; instead, competitors within the organization will see him/her as an easy target. That department will get fewer resources the next time around, and the people who work for that manager will suffer from institutional discrimination as well. The rewards go to the people who use up their budgets, successfully clamor for more, AND create the best impression that every dollar they control and every employee who reports to them is the most essential in the entire organization.
So now the formal cuts begin. The University notified 95 people on Friday, January 18, that their positions are being eliminated. Some whole departments will disappear. Other cuts are scattered around the University, Of those, five or six (there is some ambiguity about how to count one of them) are in the computing department I work in, the Office of Information Technologies. A few of these people intended to take the early retirement plan being offered by the state; the others did not, even though most of them qualify for it. The youngest person being laid off is 45 years old.
The rest of us, the next week, were walking around feeling a combination of relief, sympathy for our friends and colleagues, anger at the way the state is handling the recession and budget problems, and survivor's guilt. Personally, on that same Friday I had had my first-ever semi- annual review of my goals and progress under a new Performance Management Program. I was feeling good about how it had gone, plus a bit disappointed because it seemed to me, with all the work I had ahead of me for spring and summer, that I wasn't going to be able to take as much as an unbroken week of vacation before next year.
Wednesday afternoon, my boss's boss informed me that if the budget for FY03 (starting next July) is as bad as currently predicted, my position will be one of the positions eliminated. She said they were planning ahead; had made a list of positions that would have to be dropped in that contingency; and then had looked to see who in those positions were eligible for the early retirement incentive and were telling each of us so we would have a chance to apply (the deadline is February 15th). I was in shock.
By the weekend, shock was turning to fury. We all learned that others had been told the same thing: your position is vulnerable, you should seriously consider taking early retirement. So far, all the people warned that their positions happen to be less valuable than others are old enough and have worked for the University long enough to apply for early retirement. This fact, plus the ages of the people laid off the previous week, suggest age discrimination is running rampant.
Although some of the affected people were thinking of taking the early retirement offer, many had no such intention. We are caught: we appreciate the "heads up" so we can apply (far better than finding out two months after the offer has expired). We are told we don't actually have to commit to taking the early retirement until mid-June; but I doubt we'll know more about the University's FY03 budget in mid-June than we know now. As one of my colleagues said, we're in a poker game we didn't want to be in, and the house has all the cards.
In theory, across the University the cuts are being made in a way that preserves the core functions and services of the University. That's the stated goal, at least, and I support that goal. But no one has any information, so I don't see how that's possible. No one knows yet how many people will voluntarily take either early or regular retirement, how much money will be saved, or where. There are reports of academic departments that will lose large percentages of their faculty, but nothing is certain. I think the departments that are having to cut individual positions or parts of their operation should be obliged to tell both the employees of those departments and the University as a whole what services are being curtailed or dropped, and how that decision was reached. It appears that the decisions are based on the age of the incumbent, not the need for the position nor how well they performed their jobs.
Where programs are being cut, every department seems to be making its own decisions in isolation, in some cases justifying a decision with the idea that another department provides a similar service. If no one is looking at the big picture, the result will be chaos. I can easily envision a situation in which many services disappear with each department having concluded that theirs was expendable because "someone else" does the same thing.
The University originated as a medieval institution and that tradition has been honored in its governance. UMass, for all 32 years that I've been here, first as a student then as an employee, has been a collection of feuding dukedoms despite the efforts of various Chancellors to change the culture. David Scott tried for years to get the campus to face fiscal realities, but on the whole it rather impolitely declined to do so.
We've tried for three decades to convince various governors and legislatures to support the University as we believe it should be, and have not succeeded. About every decade, the economy constricts and state agencies go through the meat grinder. As in private industry, the people at the top with the high salaries stay on. In many cases these are the same people who were unable to get more funding or to lead the campus to scale back in a planned transition. It's the rest of us who get laid off for budgetary reasons even when we've done our jobs well for years or decades.
Instead of the person who is about to be executed, it's the executioner who is wearing a blindfold and wildly swinging his ax