The university is facing a $7 million long-term deficit due to lagging enrollment, deferred maintenance on buildings and overuse of its endowment fund.
The ultimate decision to change companies came after Wittenberg allowed longtime provider ABM to revise its original bid of $1,413,000 to $1,263,000.
Darrell Kitchen, the university’s vice president for business and finance, said, “That’s the first time we’ve done that” in his more than 25 years at the university.
To make ABM’s lower, revised bid possible, members of Local 75 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union had agreed to $1 hourly wage cuts, to forgo a 50 cent hourly increase scheduled in July and to reduced sick days and one less holiday.
ABM’s revised bid, however, remained more than $300,000 higher than the WFF proposal.
“It’s really shocking that they’ve taken 20-year and 30-year employees and smacked us in the face,” said Miriam Mayse, who has been on staff for 19 years.
Mayse said employees, who had accepted wage freezes in the past, were told they could reapply for jobs paying $8.50 an hour with less vacation, no sick days, and an insurance plan funded by employees only, replacing one to which the university had contributed more than half the monthly premiums.
The top pay rate for current ABM employees is $14.23 an hour.
“It’s ugly,” said Mayse, who added that she would not reapply because “the job’s too hard for that.”
“We made no mistakes other than doing our jobs, our cleaning,” she said. “The very people who made these very bad decisions (leading to the university’s financial troubles) are still in their jobs and are making the same money.”
Mayse said the 37 employees have been told there will be 31-33 openings.
In a email to the campus community, Kitchen said the change was part of Wittenberg’s effort to “secure a sustainable financial model.”
He said eight bids had been submitted and that because of its “longstanding relationship with ABM,” Wittenberg had taken the unusual step of letting them resubmit a bid when it was clear ABM’s original would not be competitive.
Kitchen described the move as “very difficult.”
“These are wonderful people. These are good people. I didn’t feel any better when we cut our faculty and staff pensions” or other cuts the university has made “‘to help ensure that we can become financially sustainable,” he said.
A petition protesting the changes circulated online after Wednesday’s announcement, and Sociology Professor David A. Nibert, who sent a letter of protest to President Laurie M. Joyner offered this sharp criticism: “These members of our community, who for years had been forced to the back of the bus, have now been thrown under it — along with Wittenberg’s mission and values.”
In an interview on the university’s overall response to its financial condition, President Joyner said, “I wish it could be otherwise. I wish people wouldn’t be hurt by some of the decisions we have to make.”
But she said that cost savings in all areas of the university are important so that it could protect “the core of the enterprise,” its academic programs.
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