Budget jockying

Today in the Seattle PI was this headline:

UW may face hundreds of job cuts

In short, the University of Washington may have to lay off quite a bit of staff if the budget rumors going around are true. Rumors that say that the higher-ed budget cut would be 50% above what has already been proposed.

As it happens, this is in line with an email that President Shepard sent last week. The higher-eds have dispatched lists of what they'll have to cut if the higher cut targets are passed. And they're doing their best to scare people. I don't know exactly what was in our package, but it was grim. On purpose.

Monday, the same day the above news was released, WWU announced the creation of an Outplacement Center in HR. This is to assist those staff that are given a layoff to find new jobs. I checked, and for Salaried Exempt Professionals like myself, they are required to give me either a sliding scale of warning (based on years of service, in my case 5 months notice) or a check equivalent to the same amount of salary. So if there are layoffs in the non-Union ranks, these people will need the Outplacement Center.

This is a tacit admission that our budget woes are deeply unlikely to be addressed without a reduction in force of some kind.