July 1, 2020
Dear President Cauce and members of the UW Board of Regents:
On June 11th, 2020, as part of the budgeting response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Washington leadership canceled the FY 2020 merit increases for professional staff, unrepresented academic staff, and faculty. The PSO Board is deeply concerned by this decision, which was made without consulting professional staff and leaves employees to grapple with ever increasing costs of living in the region in a time of deep economic hardship. The continual compression of professional staff salaries as compared to cost of living exacerbates existing structural inequities, widening the pay gaps between people of color and women, who are overrepresented professional staff at lower grades as compared to the managerial positions dominated by white and male employees (per UW DEI Data Book, 2018). With the backdrops of this pandemic with disproportionate health and economic impacts on low-wage and employees of color, and a national reckoning with centuries of structural racism, we write to you today to consider the impacts of this wage freeze in light of the UW’s stated commitment to “working to change exclusionary or biased policies and institutional practices that lead to and maintain racial and other forms of inequity and deny people opportunities” (UW Race and Equity Initiative). In alignment with these stated values and decisions of the State of Washington, we urge UW leadership to reverse this decision for those making under $55,000 per year. We recognize that Governor Inslee’s threshold for this decision is $53,000; due to the much higher cost of living in the communities where most UW employees live, we feel that $55,000 is, at the least, appropriate.
The UW PSO stands in solidarity with the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and Anti-Racist Staff Healing Group at UW in this urgent call: no professional staff member should be expected to forgo the already inadequate 2% merit increase. In this moment, those making the least should be protected from such cuts. Knowing what we do about the systemic inequities in our employment and pay structures, we ask the UW Administration and Board of Regents to operationalize the UW Race & Equity Initiative, and to use this as an opportunity to begin dismantling inequitable economic policies and practices by compensating those professional staff employees who are most burdened by the impacts of those structures.