URGENT Action TODAY – Email Board of Trustees!

9/21/2020

Dear FSU Members,

Tomorrow morning, Tuesday 9/22, the UMass Board of Trustees will be meeting. A number of union leaders – including myself and PSU President Anneta Argyres-- will be speaking at the meeting and urging them to roll back the draconian budget they adopted on 7/20, which called for a 6% cut to UMass personnel on all campuses. We need your help to get the Board of Trustees to hear us!

You can help us do that by sending an email TODAY, Mon. 9/21 to the UMass Board of Trustee members listed below that asks them to listen to and to act on the message that our leaders will be giving them directly. You won’t be alone—other UMB unions will be with us.  There’s an email template and a list a list of emails below. Feel free to adapt the email as you see fit and send this as a group email to the Trustees. Also, cc the FSU if you can (fsu@umb.edu)

Why should you take 5 minutes from your day to do this? 

The Board of Trustees’ 7/20 budget has already led to cuts to student services and programs as well as staff and faculty furloughs, layoffs and non-reappointments on all campuses. Members on 3 other campuses were forced to take furloughs in the Spring to address FY20 deficits, and now they have been forced to take another round of deep and unnecessary cuts based on the Board of Trustees’ fictional budget.  We at UMB haven’t been hit as hard yet, but we suspect that it’s coming. The cut to UMB’s budget could be around $39 million, 53% of which ($21m) is supposed to come from workforce reductions (layoffs, furloughs, not refilling positions).  How this is playing out:

• This week UMass Amherst PSU and USA locals were forced to accept 2 weeks of furloughs between now and December 31, along with about 136 indefinite furloughs, to avoid the layoff of over 450 members.
• Similar to UMA, this week all UMass Dartmouth unions were forced take an average 5% pay cut to avoid the layoff of hundreds of their members;
• UMass Lowell has cut over 1000 positions in total, including hundreds of adjunct faculty, over a hundred union professional staff, plus additional front-line union staff, cafeteria workers,  grad employees and student workers. 
• UMass Boston has had the fewest cuts to date, but includes non-tenure track faculty members as well as the layoff or long-term furlough of 26 CSU members and  9 PSU members.

Please take five minutes and send this email today! And cc FSU so we know we are standing together.

Steve Striffler

FSU President

Email to send to UMass Board of Trustees members: 

Dear Trustee,

Tomorrow morning, UMass union leaders will be addressing you about the very negative impacts that have resulted from the deep budget cuts the Board voted unanimously to approve at your last meeting on July 20^th.  The 7/20 budget has resulted in serious negative consequences for our students, programs, campuses and employees—and for the local economies that depend so heavily on UMass, our Commonwealth’s third largest employer. As you may be aware, neither the 10% decline in student enrollments nor the 10% cut in State appropriations on which those cuts were premised has been borne out. In addition, the UMass system has substantial reserves that should be used to get us through this crisis.

We are writing to ask you to reverse the cuts you made in the budget adopted 7/20. We are also asking you to afford our union leaders the courtesy of engaging and responding to them after they address you tomorrow about this very serious matter.

Thank you for your support for UMass.

Sincerely,

Name

FSU, UMass Boston

Addresses for Trustee Emails: