Chanting “Fund education, not administration,” hundreds of demonstrators marched though the University of Minnesota March 4. Their advice: Stop trying to fix budget problems by targeting front-line staff, faculty and students. Instead, administrators can save more money by scaling back the soaring salaries and rapid growth in their own ranks.

More than 300 front-line workers, faculty and staff marched from Morrill Hall to Coffman Union.

It’s not just that the university’s administrative staff has ballooned by more than 25 percent, said Phyllis Walker, president of AFSCME Local 3800. It’s also what the university is paying those administrators.

The university – a public, land-grant institution – now has more than 250 employees making more than $200,000 a year, Walker said.

The university “has no business paying corporate salaries while asking us to bear the burden,” said Jess Sundin, a member of Local 3800, which represents university clerical workers.

“Almost all of the top administrators and faculty at the University made more than the average employee in the same positions in colleges across the country,” according to a Minnesota Daily investigation published in January.

The demonstrators' signs and chants spoke for themselves.Paying the price
Between 2003 and 2007, the university was top-loading administrators – adding 428 administrative positions. In comparison, campuses added only 22 bargaining-unit workers and 79 full-time faculty. Total student enrollment in that same period increased only 0.5 percent.

In the two years since then, the university actually has reduced front-line support staff, wiping out more than 100 AFSCME positions alone, according to Local 3800.

While the university is bulking up at the top, staff and students are being pitted against each other and bearing the brunt of the sacrifices, Sundin and other speakers said.

• AFSCME members and other front-line workers are dealing with a two-year wage freeze, job cuts, and cuts in benefits such as health insurance and tuition reimbursement. Now, the university is talking about forced furloughs, which would mean a pay cut for workers who already are living paycheck to paycheck.

• Student tuition more than doubled in the past 10 years. Undergraduate tuition in the Twin Cities is 148 percent higher than it was in the 1999-2000 school year; Tuition is scheduled to increase an additional 7.5 percent this fall. Students say it is becoming impossible for many middle-class families to afford the university unless they bury themselves in debt.

• Graduate teaching and research assistants have had their benefits cut and are facing additional take-backs.

• Faculty are seeing class loads and work loads increase, while also facing demands for forced furloughs.

Local 3937 president Barb Bezat

A better way to save money
Chopping from the top actually would save the university more money now and in the long-term, Local 3800’s Walker said. If those making more than $200,000 a year had their pay cut by 5 percent, the university would save $3.2 million, she said. Cutting the number of administrative positions by 10 percent would save nearly $7.8 million.
Instead, the university originally wanted to impose 10 days of forced furloughs, Walker said. Among clerical workers – who make an average of $35,000 a year – the university would save only $2.1 million, she said.

Because of the attention AFSCME brought to the plan, the university apparently is scaling back the number of furlough days it will seek. But that still misses the point, Walkier said. “Forced furloughs are not the answer. They do not eliminate recurring costs.”

Barb Bezat, president of AFSCME Local 3937, which represents technical employees on the Twin Cities campuses, urged the university to seek voluntary furloughs, instead. When Hennepin County offered that option, more than 3,000 workers stepped forward and saved the county more than $4 million. The university has more than twice as many workers as the county, Bezat said, and could easily meet its savings goals if it tried.

State support declines
The university’s budget woes are, in part, a result of losing $86 million in Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s current budget plan. State support for the university has been declining for years; state funding is now less than it was when Pawlenty took office seven years ago. Thursday’s march and demonstration were endorsed by a wide range of union, student and faculty groups. They were part of a national day of action to defend funding for public education. Similar demonstrations were planned at 81 campuses in 28 states.U of M revenue mix

Any way you measure it

$628 million
State funding for University of Minnesota in 2002
$623.4 million
State funding for University of Minnesota in 2010

6.9 percent
General Fund appropriation to University of Minnesota as share of state spending, 1989
3.9 percent
General Fund appropriation to University of Minnesota as share of state spending, 2009

Sources:
• “President’s Recommended FY2009-10 Annual Operating Budget” (slide 9). Available for download at www1.umn.edu/urelate/govrel/biennialbudgetrequest/pdf/fy0910budgetpres.pdf
• “Financing 101: University Finance” (slide 15). Available for download at www1.umn.edu/urelate/govrel/past/2009/finance101pres.pdf