Passed: June 24, 2020
Sponsors: Professors Carl Franck, Risa Lieberwitz, Joanie Mackowski, Richard Bensel, and Buz Barstow
Posted: June 14, 2020
WHEREAS, during the Covid-19 pandemic, university staff have demonstrated resilience, ingenuity, and dedication;
WHEREAS, Cornell administration’s recently announced financial plans addressing Covid-19-related budget shortfalls include the possibilities of layoffs or furloughs of university staff;
WHEREAS, loss of employment at Cornell would impose severe financial hardships on staff and their dependents;
WHEREAS, comparable employment elsewhere will not be available for staff, particularly in the conditions of high unemployment during the Covid-19 pandemic;
WHEREAS, layoffs or furloughs of staff will have a severely negative impact on the broader community, given Cornell’s role as the primary employer in Tompkins County;
WHEREAS, significant staff layoffs during the financial downturn of 2008-09 damaged morale throughout the university, negatively affecting the character of the institution;
WHEREAS, preservation of employment of Cornell staff is essential to maintain the cooperative spirit that has sustained us thus far and is essential to our recovery;
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED, that the Faculty Senate recognizes the vital role and contributions of university staff;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Faculty Senate urges the Cornell administration to commit to maintaining the employment of all current staff during the Covid-19 crisis;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Faculty Senate calls on the Cornell administration to respond to the current crisis with alternatives to layoffs or furloughs, including reassigning staff to positions that will meet the university’s critical needs.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Faculty Senate encourages the Cornell administration to charge deans, faculty and staff to work collaboratively to maintain employment of all current staff, including devising adaptable, appropriate, and sustainable staff reassignments to carry the university through this crisis and continue its flourishing when it is over.
As a long time staff member over 50 and facing a possible layoff, I must admit I am heartened and proud to see much of what I read here. Comments like, “Can we all please consider whether as faculty we already are more comfortable economically than many other people Cornell employs?” and, “If tenured faculty let tenure insulate us from the losses and insecurity caused by the current crisis, we’re abusing tenure”, give me hope that Cornell does, in fact, have a soul.
But that warm glow quickly fades with comments like, “While no one WANTS staff furloughs, more transparency and a willingness to consider cutting non-essential staff is preferable to cutting faculty retirement/renumeration since the latter will INEVITABLY reduce the standing and stature of Cornell”. This is exactly the pompous, self-absorbed hierarchical attitude I, and many more like me, expected from faculty. Exactly who is non-essential? And who gets to decide that? I know I work as hard as I can, and if I lose my job, at my age, and in this “employment desert”, I will lose much more than a paycheck. My life as I know it will forever be changed.
Before we engage in any mass layoffs of Cornell staff as a response to the budgetary crisis, we should ask ourselves why we are shifting this particularly onerous burden onto only one segment of Cornell employees. Why are we demanding that individuals who, by and large, have the least political power and the lowest pay, shoulder the greatest burden? Cornell is not a charity, but we cannot ignore the harsh consequences of this action on people who can least afford bear them. Cornell’s core values include “a community of belonging,” where “students, faculty, and staff with different backgrounds . . . can learn, innovate, and work in an environment of respect . . . .” Respect cannot exist without equitable treatment.
I fully support the intent of this resolution to support the staff and that buildings/capital projects should not take precedence over people but the way this resolution is currently worded, it is not clear with the cost of maintaining staff levels will be (who will bear the brunt of the cost?) and does not take into account, incentives for or voluntary retirement.
I suggest the following modification to the Be it resolved:
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Faculty Senate calls on the Cornell administration to respond to the current crisis with alternatives to layoffs or furloughs, including reassigning staff to positions that will meet the university’s critical needs, providing incentives for retirement, and borrowing against the endowment.
It is also not clear if staff refers to RTE faculty as well and clarity on this point would be good (since the senate voted to use the term faculty versus staff for RTE personnel). If staff does not include RTE faculty, will layoffs and furloughs then be applied to RTE faculty.
We are also not always aware of the financial situation of faculty. Some faculty may have large debts or big financial commitments and having a greater paycut or one for longer duration could add tremendous financial hardship during a time of great uncertainty and stress.
Thanks for your comments. Speaking for the originators of the resolution, it is certainly strongly implicit in the spirit of our resolution that RTE faculty positions should also be preserved. We also appreciate the additional funding sources you identify and also feel that it is in the spirit of our resolution and our remarks for today you can now find on our slides. In an effort to ensure that we have a vote today and given the large number of cosponsors who signed on to the original wording, we respectfully decline the wisely and thoughtfully offered amendments. Sincerely, Carl Franck, Physics (cpf1)
I can’t concur.
I think that the ongoing crisis could be an excellent opportunity to assess the efficiency of the university. For example, is there a need to have duplicity of many offices in each college?
While no one WANTS staff furloughs, more transparency and a willingness to consider cutting non-essential staff is preferable to cutting faculty retirement/renumeration since the latter will INEVITABLY reduce the standing and stature of Cornell.
Reduction in salary/benefits will hurt us (as individuals) in the long run due to its compound nature and will erode the quality of scholarship and instruction on the Ithaca campus and thus hurt Cornell University as a whole.
Our staff provide essential functions that otherwise would need to be performed by faculty effort. In my department, staff also intrinsically sense and maintain academic department culture in ways busy faculty often neglect, and we function collectively better for it. I know I would not be able to write nearly as many grants, counsel students, and plan program without the essential help of each of the staff in my department. These support roles and the occasional corn hole/ice cream social they conceive/run on their own is well worth the fractional support each of us can give. No amount of automation can replace these roles, and faculty (bless us) will likely do a crappier job at it and still cost us these resources in time/money.
What the Faculty Senate is proposing is very interesting, particularly the desire to seek alternatives to staff layoffs or furloughs. By reassigning staff to achieve critical needs and/or initiatives, we can maintain high morale and continue to grow in key areas as we weather the crisis. And, if this were to become a standard concept that was implemented as needed (e.g. during crisis or during growth/change), the institution would become more agile and could adapt quickly during troubling or growing times.
By integrating “workforce agility” into our culture, learning and cross-training would be a standard expectation for all staff – leading to heightened levels of engagement and a greater pool of highly skilled staff to tap into for the foreseeable future. We could ride out the ebbs and flows with greater ease, and staff would be ready to step up to do their part. This might benefit our diversity goals too, as sometimes we might need a bit more experience to be competitive for other positions. Flexible reassignments will allow folks to expand their networks and gain the skills they need for their next dream job or just to learn something new and stay engaged. The Gig concept that was rolled out in Workday can be harnessed for this initiative. We are already using it for similar purposes anyway.
The New York Times op-ed referenced above by Carl Franck seems right on the money. Please do read it (or listen to it if you don’t have a NY Times subscription). Why can’t we all be in this crisis together and share the burdens it is imposing? Can we all please consider whether as faculty we already are more comfortable economically than many other people Cornell employs? If so, then is not a little sacrifice for us worth the much more tremendous value and security it provides all others who are part of our team here at Cornell that help make the university function smoothly for all of us? It certainly seems like a moral, humane, compassionate, and ultimately beneficial thing to do for everyone and for the university as a whole. If we give a little now, we may get back much more later.
This resolution should include RTE faculty and non-voting academic staff. There are many people in these categories who have made their career at Cornell, contributing to the mission but on short term (1-5 year) contracts. They could simply not be renewed or have their positions eliminated and never end up in the statistics. This is playing out at many other schools and is a genuine concern.
Dear Colleagues: I think this recent opinion piece from the NY Times is of great value for our discussion, Sincerely, Carl Franck, resolution cosponsor:
`More People Will Be Fired in the Pandemic. Let’s Talk About It.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/opinion/layoffs-coronavirus-economy.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Dear Faculty and Especially Senators: Please draw the attention of your departmental colleagues to our resolution and encourage them to comment here.
Faculty members (it is not necessary to be a senator) wishing to sign up as a cosponsor are most welcome to get the signup link by emailing one of the first five cosponsors.
A periodically updated list of cosponsors of our resolution in support of continued staff employment is available at
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16JjyZNJn1GnyhRtCiaqad8trGYXhVboz2RN-oe6mfjM/edit?usp=sharing
Sincerely, Carl Franck, cpf1@cornell.edu, Senator, Physics
I support this resolution. If tenured faculty let tenure insulate us from the losses and insecurity caused by the current crisis, we’re abusing tenure. The argument in a prior comment about “tradeoffs” is inaccurate. A tradeoff– that the university must lose some things to retain others– false. The truth: the university (tenured profs & administration) keeps what is has, and staff lose.
I think that this resolution is about daring faculty and administration to put their money where their mouths are. If we say we’re committed to staff, let’s prove it. Let’s show that tenure protects something more than our own self-interests by giving up some of our interests to protect what we say is the “university.” Why shouldn’t faculty take two or three years of 10% salary cuts? Why should we instead accept that the university will fire people just because it can– and because it can’t fire us?
Comment by Risa Lieberwitz, ILR Faculty Senator:
I support the Resolution because it promotes Cornell’s “core values” and proposes a reasonable and practical alternative to staff layoffs or furloughs. President Pollack has recognized that the Cornell staff “have shown such extraordinary flexibility and dedication in carrying out the myriad tasks that are necessary to support our university.” President Pollack has also stated that our “core values” include “maintaining our staffing.” The proposed Resolution calls on the administration to take actions that make these core values meaningful. In particular, the Resolution proposes that deans, faculty, and staff work together to maintain staff employment, including developing alternatives such as job reassignments. This proposal takes shared governance seriously, recognizing the benefits of having the administration and faculty work together to find solutions.
A concern I would raise stems from our knowledge that the endowment is Cornell’s primary resource for funding diversity initiatives. Looking at BLM and other societal priorities, I’m troubled to be asked to support a resolution that basically says “faculty salaries take priority over everything.” In fact Cornell is cutting extensively in many areas, but by reducing our endowment, we would essentially be undercutting the other priorities that President Pollack and Provost Kotlikoff mentioned — which include using the endowment to invest in building a more diverse faculty, and ensuring equal access to Cornell for students who may be from families of very modest means.
This was intended as a comment on the sense of the senate resolution but got misposted.
I concur.
Cornell University needs to be transitioning to greater IT infrastructural support of our core mission (and shedding of positions that have arisen as part of mission creep). Many administrative systems are not integrated and lead to enormous overheads/paperwork and a lack of transparency. Adapting to be a University of the C21st with streamlined (and integrated) systems will make the University better by yielding tremendous efficiencies and an improved experience for faculty and students alike.
Offering staff retirement/severance and engaging in a reduction in force (i.e curtailment of the workforce resulting in the elimination of one or more Staff positions) is not unique to Cornell but part of ANY institutions reasonable rationale response to budget reductions and/or lack of work.
It is not in the best interests of Cornell to dogmatically cling to staffing levels that are not sustainable.
I am confident that University administrators will demonstrate that they too are reducing institutional overhead by reducing administrator numbers and in doing so will show genuine leadership and help acceptance of the need for Cornell to undertake this restructuring.
As a longterm staff member, I want to thank the faculty involved in this for being our voice. The fact that the President and Provost can’t even produce data on how many staff have already been laid-off/furloughed speaks volumes. They simply don’t care. Temporarily cut salaries and temporarily stop retirement contributions, but give us all a guarantee that they will return to where they were when the crisis ends. We’re all willing to do our part, but we need to keep our positions. This part of the state is an employment desert. For most of us, there’s no where else to work.
While this resolution is well-intentioned and all faculty are sympathetic with its intent, have the sponsors really considered the real-world implications? If taken literally — notably the phrase that would commit the university to “maintaining the employment of all current staff during the Covid-19 crisis” — this would significantly reduce degrees of freedom in making budget cuts going forward. We don’t know the tradeoffs that are involved now, much less the future, but we do know that tradeoffs always exist. Even though staff make much less in salary on average than faculty, would endowed faculty would favor, say, the proposed 1-year elimination of retirement benefits being extended to two years? Or would statutory faculty would favor a 10-15% salary cut rather than the 5% max that is proposed? The resolution as currently worded fails to recognize the existence of tradeoffs and the high degree of uncertainty that currently exists. We simply do not know what the present or future tradeoffs are and will be. Flexibility is always needed to make budgetary adjustments in an uncertain environment. If the intent here is to signal solidarity of the faculty with the staff, that is certainly a sentiment that all faculty would likely support. I would hope that the sponsors would consider amending their second “be it resolved”, to urge the administration to “do their best to maintain current employment” or similar more realistic language that all faculty can support.
I agree. Comparable employment elsewhere will also not be available for faculty.
“Comparable employment…for faculty” is not an issue; no one is talking about firing faculty or faculty losing jobs. To equate staff layoffs with faculty *wanting* to leave b/c of a pay cut is bad math and illogical.
“…urge the administration to “do their best to maintain current employment” or similar more realistic language that all faculty can support”
This is an inspired suggestion.