About 150 University of Arizona union members and protesters gathered Monday in front of the administration building to fight layoffs and denounce campus leaders for fiscal mismanagement, warning that some workers are already reporting via a labor survey that they are being laid off.
“As of today, we’ve confirmed about 30 layoffs,” Maria Sohn Hasman, the union’s media representative and a UA staff member, told Arizona Luminaria following the “Labor Against Layoffs” protest organized by the United Campus Workers Arizona.
UA officials responded to the union’s reports of layoffs.
“The university has not mandated any layoffs. These are usually decisions made at the college or unit level,” Pam Scott, UA’s associate vice president of external communications, told Arizona Luminaria in an email Monday.
After months of speculation as to how the university would address its financial crisis, Arizona Board of Regents Executive Director John Arnold announced at a Jan. 29 UA leadership forum that every department will have to come up with a plan that reduces their budget by 5%-15%. Arnold is currently the UA’s interim Chief Financial Officer. He said it would be up to each departments’ discretion whether these cuts include layoffs.
“People are using the budget crisis as an excuse to lay off people,” Sohn Hasman said.
Fifteen of these union-reported layoffs are due to the upcoming closure of the Child Language Center, Sohn Hasman said. In a Dec. 6 message on the nationally-recognized center’s website, Pat Jimenez, board of directors president for the program, wrote about the longstanding partnership between the UA and school ending.
“I am sure our community will have questions regarding this transition,” Jimenez wrote. “As we are finalizing plans, we will not have specific details until the new year, so we appreciate your patience and understanding.”
The impending changes are a mutual decision that are expected to take place on July 1, she wrote. “Our intention is the school will continue to operate and provide the same services for children in our community,” she wrote.
Sohn Hasman also said the university’s Office of Strategic Initiatives is shutting down mid-February. The strategic initiatives website lists seven employees on its main page.
Scott responded in an email to Arizona Luminaria that this was a planned closure predating the financial crisis.
“The 5-year funding for the Office of Strategic Initiatives, which was established in 2019, will end in 2024 as planned,” Scott said, adding that “all employees in the office accepted their position with the understanding that the funding was temporary.”
In a Dec. 13 letter to the board of regents outlining the “University of Arizona Financial Action Plan,” President Robert Robbins listed the “immediate conclusion of strategic initiatives” as one of the actions to “immediately reduce spending in the second half of FY 2024.”
Arizona Luminaria reached out to Jane Hunter, the vice president for strategic initiatives, for comment on the closure and layoffs. Hunter responded that “we have a draft reply in the works.” That message was followed by the response from Scott.
A Luminaria reporter reached out to several additional employees with the office who have not yet responded. The office’s mission states that the team was created to “support the effective and efficient implementation of the initiatives” in the University of Arizona strategic plan.
Money for the Strategic Initiative Fund is cited as available from Jan. 1, 2019 through June. 30, 2024. Information about the fund and the office are on the same UA strategic plan website.
The fund is part of the school’s 10-year strategic plan that launched in 2018 and is designated “to invest in strategic initiatives outlined in the University of Arizona Strategic Plan approved by Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) in November 2018.”
On Dec. 13, Robbins announced that Arnold would take over as interim CFO and charged him with leading the fiscal plan. Those steps came after former CFO Lisa Rulney resigned amid outcry. UA workers were further outraged when they later found out university leaders kept Rulney on staff in a business operations advisory role and maintained her full salary.
Sohn Hasman said the work survey was emailed campus-wide as a resource for union members to share concerns about the financial crisis, including reporting layoffs, retaliation or intimidation and increased workload.
The union represents a coalition of faculty, staff and students who have long called for UA’s top leaders to resign, including President Robbins.
Survey respondents may answer anonymously or volunteer their name and contact information. Sohn Hasman said the union has personally verified most of the reported layoffs but is not sharing details in order to protect whistleblowers.
“We have created this form to track how employees have been affected by the UA financial mismanagement crisis so that we can better understand the impact on our university community,” according to a copy of the survey obtained by Arizona Luminaria. “We recognize that speaking out presents risks, so identifying information will be held in strict confidence, and each question is optional.”
Arnold walked into the University of Arizona’s Administration Building as more than a hundred faculty, students, staff and concerned community members vocalized their outrage at the protest.
“Shame on you!” “Chop from the top!”
He quickly glanced at the fuming crowd, and then entered the high-rise campus building as people continued chanting.
Protesters were not expecting to see Arnold or any university leaders. Many had gathered outside the administration building 30 minutes prior to the demonstration.
“Your tuition, your fees, your work, your research, your teaching all funds this university,” said Leila Hudson, chair of the Faculty Senate and associate professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies. She noted that the college had a surplus last year, yet now employees and students are being punished for university administrators’ financial mismanagement.
“Some senior faculty have named the situation a ‘reverse Robin Hood,’” Hudson said.
Without intervention, the UA is currently on track to overspend by $177 million, $37 million more than last year’s deficit of $140 million, according to Arnold at the Jan. 29 university leadership meeting.
He said that, while not in financial jeopardy, the university’s “spending patterns are dangerous” and they plan to rein it in over the next 18 to 36 months.
UA’s financial crisis recently drew scathing criticism from Gov. Katie Hobbs who took to social media to call for independent oversight “to restore faith and trust in the university.” Hobbs slammed UA officials, repeatedly citing leadership’s failures and lambasting the regents’ response to the university’s financial crisis, saying, “I no longer trust the process that is in place,” according to a Jan. 25 letter addressed to Arnold and board chair Fred DuVal.
The governor outlined immediate steps she wants the board to take, including overhauling their action plan and removing Arnold “as quickly as possible” from his temporary position to avoid “a real or perceived conflict of interest with Executive Director Arnold serving in a dual capacity in his role at ABOR and as CFO at the University of Arizona.”
DuVal responded to Hobbs’ letter in a Jan. 26 statement to Arizona Luminaria saying they were going to fix the situation and that “a team of national higher education finance experts” will join as third-party forensic analysts.
Speakers at Monday’s protest came from most rungs of university governance — including the Faculty Senate and Graduate and Professional Student Council. They decried the school administration’s incompetence.
“Having worked with John Arnold, he’s even worse than you could ever imagine,” said Jeremy Bernick, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Council, after seeing Arnold walk past protesters.
“The recent announcement of potential loss has overwhelmingly sent shockwaves through our community and we are here to make our voices heard,” said Alyssa Sanchez, a union member and the first Latina president of the Associated Students of the University of Arizona. The organization represents undergraduate students.
“The burden of these actions should never disproportionately fall on the shoulders of our hard-working staff and faculty,” she added during her speech.
The United Campus Workers Arizona union handed out T-shirts, signs and encouraged people to fill out the survey created to track how the university’s financial mismanagement has affected employees.
Sohn Hasman also confirmed that the union has hired Howard Bunsis to do an independent audit of the school’s finances and that the new report will be available in April.
Bunsis is the former chair of the American Association of University Professors’ Collective Bargaining Congress and has led similar financial audits at universities across the country.
He did an audit of the UA’s finances in June 2020, finding that despite the university saying there was “an extreme financial crisis,” there was no such thing. He wrote then that “there is no need to lay off or furlough workers.”
Along with the layoffs, Sohn Hasman said, are office closures and program cancellations, including no longer offering the American Indian Studies major. A university official responded to a faculty members’ concern over the program’s cancellation at the Jan. 29 meeting by saying, “that was a decision made by the department because they have very, very few majors.”
Sanchez and countless other university stakeholders have long been frustrated at the lack of communication from the UA and Board of Regents leadership team tasked with creating the plan. She said they’re in the dark about actions that threaten university staff’s livelihoods.
She said that no one in university leadership charged with creating the financial plan reached out to her, despite her governance position, echoing criticism from other protest speakers, including Hudson.
“You think they’d gone low and then they go lower,” Sanchez said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story included information from United Campus Workers Arizona about a University of Arizona department closing that was incorrect. Union officials have since provided the correct department name: the Office of Strategic Initiatives. Arizona Luminaria has confirmed the department’s name and closure with Pam Scott, UA’s associate vice president of external communications. The story has been updated to remove the error and include new reporting on the correct department.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print.
