Shauna Manning, President of the UMass Boston Classified Staff Union
I am Shauna Manning, the president of the Classified Staff Union at UMass Boston, where I have worked for almost 20 years. I am also an alumna who would like to see the university once again be a contender for national excellence.
In 1987, U.S. News and World Report named UMB as one of the best and most promising universities in the country. That year, I decided to transfer from California to Boston to complete my education.
In 1987, no one had cell phones. Daytime cross country phone calls were expensive. I got up at 6:00 am California time to call Boston universities at 9:00 am for information about admissions. I called Boston University, Northeastern, Boston College, and UMass Boston. Of all of these institutions, the employees at UMass Boston were by far the most friendly and helpful. When they heard I was calling from California, they bent over backward to help me. Each time I called, I had a positive experience. This phone relationship helped convince me to choose UMB.
Much later, I learned that everyone I had spoken to in 1987 was a Classified Staff employee. Those excellent frontline representatives are a part of the reason I am standing in front of you today. The other is the employee tuition and fee waiver, which subsequently prompted me to apply for a job on campus.
You may not realize that today the UMass system's Classified Staff employees still work under the same state job titles that were last updated in 1987-a time before cell phones, email, and the internet. You may not know that the state took a five year pay scale in the late 90's and stretched it into 12 steps without adding money. Now, it takes 14 years for a Classified Staff employee to reach his/her contractual salary.
Boston is one of the most expensive cities to live in the U.S., but none of our salary increases have kept up with the local inflation rate. The net result is that each year our salaries decrease.
Employees have told me-ashamed and in tears-that they have had to take Personal days prior to payday because they could not afford to pay for gas and parking to get to work. A new mailroom employee pays 4.5% of his salary to park here while he works. Employees have had to decide each month which bill not to pay as they struggle to cover their basic living expenses.
While employed here, I have never seen a contract negotiated on time. Employees are constantly paid in arrears, and when we finally get that lump sum owed us, we are taxed at 27%.
The result is we are not retaining new employees. In fact, we are becoming the training ground for higher education in the Boston area. Evidently, we are doing a very good job, because employees are working 1-3 years here and moving to better paying staff jobs at Harvard, MIT, Boston University, and Northeastern.
In our Facilities area, we have only 2 electricians and no plumbers on campus. Our last plumber retired in May and our salary scale is so low, we can't attract employees.
We cannot grow as a university if we are constantly understaffed and training the staff we do have. We cannot attract and retain talented employees if they can't pay for basic necessities-food, rent, and transportation-on our full time salaries.
How do we solve this problem?? First, we need genuine cost of living increases so we don't actually make less money each year. Second, we need to increase staffing levels so that the university can handle its own business competently. And last but not least, we need to move forward expeditiously on getting our job descriptions, titles, and salaries into the 21st century.
We need you, our Board of Trustees, to make these three issues a priority. They are crucial to the future of the University.