This commentary is by Claire Whitehouse and Ellen Kaye, co-presidents of UVM Staff United.
With its staff’s first contract set to expire June 30, the University of Vermont faces a turning point. Will it continue to concentrate money at the top and suppress wages in the midst of an affordability crisis? Will it make it harder to hire and retain staff while it grows enrollment and research programs? Or will it choose to be an economic engine for the state by offering livable wages, good benefits and opportunities to grow jobs into careers? Will it adequately staff the programs it promises, or let them languish?
This year, UVM staff are fighting at the bargaining table to make the state’s flagship university a great place to work.
Our union, UVM Staff United, represents UVM’s clerical, specialized, technical and professional staff. Our members include department administrators, researchers, student advisors, IT professionals, extension educators and more. At nearly 1500, we are the largest bargaining unit at the second-largest employer in the state, and we keep UVM running. But many of us struggle to afford to stay in our jobs — and in Vermont.
We began bargaining our second contract in February, holding fast to our priorities: increasing wages, establishing a step-scale system of wage progression and maintaining high-quality health insurance. These negotiations fall at a critical moment. Even with the raises we won in our first contract two years ago, our purchasing power has fallen 3.9% due to inflation. A 34.8% increase in healthcare premiums has likewise eaten into our pay. In the past year alone, home prices in Vermont rose more than in any other state, and even renting in Chittenden County is out of reach for many staff.
This spring, the Department of Housing and Urban Development released updated income limit data. Per these updated statistics, a single earner in the Burlington metro area making less than $66,600/year is considered low-income.
UVM pays 77% of our bargaining unit low-income wages.
These low wages impact our lives, and our workplaces. Younger staff struggle to find a foothold in Vermont’s housing market, and many leave for better-paying work elsewhere. For older colleagues, decades of stagnated wages make retirement an elusive dream. UVM has high turnover, and many searches fail because applicants cannot reconcile salaries with the cost of living in Vermont. Those of us who remain shoulder heavy workloads to make up for vacant positions, and programs and students suffer as a result.
In the midst of this hiring and retention crisis, the UVM administration has ignored our proposal for a step-scale and offered wage increases below inflation. They plead poverty and pit us against students, claiming that paying market-rate wages will require drastic tuition increases. While UVM is not immune to the economic forces that have made life hard for staff, rising enrollment numbers and reports of financial health delivered to the Board of Trustees paint a different picture than the tale of woe management tells at the table.
Paying staff a livable wage is not a question of possibility, but of priority. As of November 2023, UVM paid its twenty top administrators the same as the 180 lowest-paid members of our bargaining unit. This calculation does not account for bonuses and benefits. In 2023, President Suresh Garimella received a $75k bonus and over $226k in deferred compensation on top of his $509k base pay. UVM prioritizes what they call “top talent” at the expense of those of us whose talents keep the gears of the university turning. This greed has opportunity costs: loss of productivity due to open positions, increased hiring costs from high turnover and failed searches, and loss of expertise and institutional knowledge.
UVM’s refusal to offer fair wages is nothing new. The university has long controlled its costs on the backs of staff. UVM responded to the 2008 economic crisis by laying off staff and ending the practice of meaningful annual raises. Over the past decade it has doubled its research dollars and grown undergraduate enrollment by 27%, yet the administration takes the same approach to drafting its budgets: tightening our belts while loosening their own.
We are not the same staff as we were 15 years ago. Today we stand unionized and united in telling the administration: we will not be your cost control any longer. We believe that Vermont’s flagship university and second-largest employer can be a great place to work. This means offering livable wages and a system for wage advancement that allows us to build careers here. It means continuing to offer good health insurance that means we can get sick without going broke. It means recognizing that the problem of recruitment and retention can only be solved by paying staff what we are worth.
Our colleagues care deeply about UVM. We devote the best hours of the day and the best years of our lives to serving students, conducting research, and doing outreach work across Vermont. We believe the University can be a positive force in the state, not just by offering high-quality education and programs serving Vermonters, but by changing Vermont’s labor market for the better. We call on the UVM administration to join us in making this vision a reality.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Claire Whitehouse and Ellen Kaye: Making UVM a great place to work.