Covid-19 has magnified inequalities. The poorer you are, the greater likelihood of contracting the Covid-19 virus. The disproportion in mortality rates among different racial groups is shocking, and points to unhealthy “underlying conditions” of labor and lack of access to medical care. Not just the virus but the response to the virus has intensified inequality, widening the chasm between an economically insulated professional managerial class and service workers who are either laid off or on the front line.
As the University of California makes financial plans for an uncertain future, it must strive to avoid exacerbating these inequalities. By announcing as its first response a general hiring freeze, it has instead dampened the job prospects of our students, and intensified the anxiety of some of its most vulnerable employees, since the announced hiring freeze puts the continuing employment of many lecturers in doubt.
Surely a more progressive first response to the impending financial squeeze might have been imagined. Indeed it was: within weeks of shelter-in-place orders, several universities announced that top administrators would immediately take a substantial pay cut—as high as 25%. This includes private universities such as Harvard, USC, and Stanford, but also public institutions such as the University of Oregon, the University of Missouri, and Rutgers University.
No one is suggesting that such voluntary pay reductions would be sufficient to help UC weather the crisis ahead. Already the Berkeley campus is estimating costs of $200 million from lost revenue and added expenses; the situation of UC campuses with medical schools is worse. But — given the strong possibility that faculty and staff will see pay cuts — the willingness of highly-paid administrators to lead by example would certainly be welcome.
At the meeting of the Academic Senate last Thursday (April 30), Chancellor Christ expressed no such willingness. At the same time she declared herself averse to furloughs, she allowed that the decision will be made by the Office of the President.
If there are to be furloughs, i.e. pay cuts, they should be progressive, with the deepest cuts borne by the most well-paid, and the lowest-paid protected from any cuts. If senior faculty and administrators agree to bear the greatest burden, then donors (and even the state) may feel more charitable toward the university. The money saved from salaries could be used to create funds for the needy, and to buttress resources for teaching and other crucial services.
Michael Burawoy and Celeste Langan for the Berkeley Faculty Association