Todd Holden, President of AFSCME Local 1072 at the University of Maryland College Park, union steward Sarah Eppley and laid-off member Sarah Grun joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to discuss a mass layoff at the university that the Local claims disproportionately targeted union members, came without meaningful consultation with the union, and happened one week before a meeting with university president Darryll Pines to discuss the budget pressures the university cited as justification for the cuts.
Of the more than 80 workers laid off, about 80 percent were union-represented. The university's nearly $1 billion endowment remains untouched, as do the salaries of top administrators and coaches.
AFSCME Local 1072 has filed 40 grievances, the university lifted its hiring freeze almost immediately after the layoffs and the union is calling on the community to sign a letter demanding accountability from the University System of Maryland.
AFSCME Local 1072 represents over 4,200 workers at the university. It is part of AFSCME Maryland Council 3.
AFSCME Local 1072 represents more than 4,200 workers at the University of Maryland, College Park, one of the largest public research universities in the country. Todd Holden, the Local's president, said the relationship between the university and organized labor has never been simple. It took a long time for higher education workers in Maryland to win labor rights at all, and the past 30 years have been, in his words, a lot of uphill fighting just to get rights that a strongly Democratic and liberal state would seemingly guarantee. Maryland's labor laws have historically lagged behind those of other states. It was only a few years ago that union-represented salaried workers gained protections from being let go without cause.
In early June, the university announced layoffs of more than 80 positions. More than 80 percent of those positions were held by AFSCME Local 1072 members. Holden said the layoffs were announced one week before a scheduled meeting between the union and university president Darryll Pines. The meeting was set to specifically discuss budget pressures and collaborative solutions. The university acted first and scheduled the conversation second, Holden said.
Holden challenged the justification the university stated for the layoffs. The university cited a loss of federal and research funding as the driver. What it did not cite was the university’s nearly $1 billion endowment sitting in reserve, a restricted fund balance of hundreds of millions of dollars that the University System of Maryland requires the institution to maintain, the more than $1 million annual salary of university president Darryll Pines or the multi-million-dollar salaries of university coaches whose teams have losing records.
Taking a closer look at who was laid off demonstrates what the layoffs were actually about, Holden said. Eppley added that almost immediately after the layoffs were announced, the university lifted its hiring freeze. The question is not whether the university can sustain its workforce, she said. The question is who the university wants to be part of its workforce.
Eppley, who serves as a union steward, raised serious procedural and legal questions while describing the profile of workers who were terminated entire departments were eliminated in some cases. In others, one or two people from a department were selected, but the union believes the decisions were not random.
Among the workers laid off: people who had recently won grievances, people who were still actively pursuing grievances, people with ADA accommodations, people who had recently taken FMLA or parental leave and people who had been active in union organizing. One member was still on parental leave, with a sick child still in the hospital, when her entire department was notified of her layoff before she was informed herself.
AFSCME Local 1072 filed 40 grievances covering cases they believe warrant a full hearing. They include cases with sufficient procedural defect, policy violations or contract violations. The university's response, Holden said, has been to argue that the layoffs are equivalent to terminations and that workers do not even have the right to a hearing. He believes the university is hoping to wait out the union, let workers lose hope and make the situation go away without a full and fair airing of the particulars.
Sarah Grun joined the conversation as one of the laid-off members. She managed strategic initiatives and special projects at the College of Information, with a particular focus on large-scale event planning. In the month before her layoff, she had led the university's presence at Maryland Day, the largest event the university hosts, organized an annual awards reception for distinguished alumni and coordinated commencement. She described coming off the high of those events and finding herself called into her supervisor's office on June 3, where her supervisor read from a script without making eye contact. She was in tears. The process was clinical and impersonal in a way that she said felt like a slap in the face, given everything she had put into her work.
The consequences extended beyond her job. She had recently taken FMLA for major surgery and was still in recovery and undergoing testing when she was terminated. Her primary care, women's health services and pharmacy were all located at the university health center. She lost access to all of them when she lost her job. She had also bought a house near campus, expecting to build a long career at the institution. She described the experience as soul-crushing, then made clear that her story was one of more than 80.
Eppley noted one of the most telling aspects of the layoffs: the work the terminated employees were doing is not being discontinued. Commencement still happens. Maryland Day still happens. The events, the administrative functions and the services these workers provided still need to happen. The difference is that without the people whose jobs were dedicated to that work, it will fall to colleagues who are already overburdened. The university has not reduced its operational commitments. It has simply reduced the staffing available to meet their needs, leaving the remaining workers to absorb the shortfall.
Holden and Eppley said the fight is far from over. AFSCME has developed a toolkit including a letter template that community members, supporters and anyone who believes the university's actions were unjust can sign. The letter goes to the University System of Maryland. Bowie State University experienced similar layoffs around the same time, and both situations are part of a broader pattern the union is determined to document and fight through every available channel.
The immediate legal fight is over workers’ right to grieve their layoffs at all. If the union wins that fight, 40 cases go to full hearings where the specific circumstances of each termination can be examined. The union also intends to keep the story in public view, hold the university accountable for the contradiction between its stated budget crisis and its actual financial reserves and ensure that the workers who were pushed out receive the fair treatment the university owes them.
More information on AFSCME Local 1072 and the toolkit letter is available at afscmemd.org.
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