Dear SEAS Community,
We are writing to bring your attention to the massive workforce changes and reduction in both union and non-union staff that is happening today. An email went out early this morning from Dean Parkes to the SEAS community about these changes. SEAS has decided to reduce its HUCTW staff by about 25%, the largest cut at any Harvard school in decades and at least three times deeper than any other Harvard unit is undertaking in this challenging moment. We are shocked and saddened by these changes. We are sending this email to as many staff and faculty in the SEAS community as we can, so please feel free to forward it on. For those of you who don’t know us, we are the HUCTW organizers for the SEAS union members.
As part of the HUCTW-Harvard Agreement, we have a mandatory union-management consultation process when layoffs are under consideration. In response to specific requests for information, SEAS administrators were unable or unwilling to give us specific data that would substantiate the need to make these painful cuts, which can only lead us to believe that current factual circumstances do not justify these destructive reductions and reorganizations at this time.
- We asked what past, current, and future budget deficits SEAS is facing – and we were given no specific numbers.
- We asked if there was a specific dollar amount of cost reduction that SEAS needs achieve – and we were given no specific numbers.
- We asked if the University had directed a level of budget cuts or a number of layoffs SEAS needed to make – we were told no.
- We asked if this number of layoffs would “solve” whatever problem they think they need to solve – we were told they do not know.
- We asked if SEAS had requested assistance from the University, as in the past, to help cover their costs during this time – we were told no.
- We asked what kind of impact administrators expected the future endowment tax increase would have on their finances – we were told “we don’t know yet.”
We do not believe that these are adequate answers to critical questions – not only in terms of union-management relations but also for the respect and dignity of all the staff members who are facing layoff, some with decades of service, and all with deep commitment to their work at the University. Even more critically, these cuts to faculty and student services and other core SEAS infrastructure, which do not appear to have any solid basis in current quantified realities, will have a profound negative impact on the quality of teaching, research, and learning at SEAS.
Our whole community knows these are tough times, we are not here to negate the challenges that Harvard schools are going through. However, we DO feel that the staff are an integral part of the mission of this University and the reduction of staff should not be used to reduce costs when there is no clearly demonstrated need. In addition, there have been clear and encouraging signs in just the past few weeks that federal research funding is being restored and has begun to flow into Harvard researchers’ federal funding accounts. If you want to know more about the latest events in the rapidly-changing federal funding landscape, please read HUCTW’s open letter from last week here.
We are asking everyone in the SEAS community to write to the following SEAS administrators and let them know what you think about these changes. Please also cc the HUCTW office at huctw.info@huctw.org
David Parks: parkes@eecs.harvard.edu
Tim Bowman: gtbowman@seas.harvard.edu
Kimberly Harris: kharris@seas.harvard.edu
Leslie Schaffer: lschaffer@seas.harvard.edu
Additionally, if you see examples of SEAS spending on non-critical activities (food and drink at events, cosmetic renovations, use of consultants, LHTs or agency temps), we are interested to hear about them.
Thank you for your support and please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We are a confidential resource.
Thank you,
Simone Gonzalez
Emily Vides
Emily Spicer Hankle