Southern Oregon University union in Ashland responds to budget cuts

Southern Oregon University recently announced plans to cut 15% of its budget over three years. The proposal would eliminate 15 majors and 11 minors, and lead to the elimination of more than 60 positions through a combination of layoffs, voluntary retirements and not filling vacancies. SOU President Rick Bailey attributes the university’s ongoing financial crisis to a number of factors including declining enrollment, decreased state funding and federal actions by the Trump administration.

Sage TeBeest is a creative arts program assistant at SOU and the president of SEIU 503 Sublocal 84, which represents classified staff at the university. She joins us with more on how union members are reacting to the cuts.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Southern Oregon University recently announced plans for a major budget cut. This is on top of substantial cuts in recent years. The new proposal would lead to 20 layoffs. More than 40 other positions would be eliminated through voluntary retirements and not filling vacancies. Fifteen academic majors would be cut. We talked about this with the president of the university on Monday.

We’re going to get a union perspective today. Sage TeBeest is a creative arts program assistant at SOU. She’s also the president of SEIU 503 Sublocal 84, which represents classified staff at the university. She joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.

Sage TeBeest: It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Miller: Can you put this current round of proposed cuts in context? What level of cuts have you seen in the last three years?

TeBeest: We started with the SOU Forward plan in ‘23, which was a two-phase process. In June of ‘23, we had a first round of cuts and in June of ‘24, we had a second round. Total positions impacted at that time were 82, so a substantial amount of impacted workforce at that particular time. This round, we’re looking at approximately 64 impacted staff, whether that is impacted and kind of shuffled around or reductions and noticing of those employees.

Miller: What kinds of positions are included in your union?

TeBeest: Classified staff include everything from accounting to landscapers. It’s a pretty broad spectrum of support workers and staff that, in my opinion, help keep everything running and operating.

Miller: What has the balance been between cuts to staff like yours, people in your union, and faculty in the last round of layoffs?

TeBeest: In the last round, I believe staff, both classified and unclassified – and I can clarify that if needed – took, I think, the larger brunt of the layoffs and reductions than faculty did. And sadly this time, it appears that the faculty are probably gonna be ones that take the larger brunt of the layoffs and reductions.

Miller: I am curious what the difference is between the classified staff who are members of your union and what you said are unclassified. So who are they? What do they do?

TeBeest: Unclassified staff are typically administrators. They can be admin support staff, but all the way up to the executive are considered unclassified. The difference is the faculty, of course, have the faculty union APSOU that represents them. The classified staff have us, SEIU. Unfortunately, unclassified staff actually don’t have representation. It wasn’t until about four years ago, maybe five, that they created the Staff Assembly, which was an ability to give them a voice to bring concerns to the administration and let them know what was going on in the unclassified world of the workforce. But unfortunately, they do not have bargaining power or contractual power. It’s more just being able to voice concerns.

Miller: So there were these really significant cuts two years ago and last year. When did you get a sense that another round of truly significant cuts was coming?

TeBeest: I think we could kind of gather that just from the things that were happening, whether it was the state budget or the federal changes that are going to be impacting higher ed. But as we began to see changes in our own budget, it was probably late spring that we began having conversations with the administration about what this could mean and what it might look like.

Miller: And then soon after that, you wrote a letter to the administration that included this: “We need transparency in where cuts are made, why certain positions are preserved while others are eliminated, and how the administration is holding itself accountable.” What prompted you to write that?

TeBeest: I wanted to see that there was an equal stake in the reductions, that it’s not always classified or unclassified lower workers that are carrying the brunt of those cuts. Those also happen to be the people that keep everything going and operational. We saw in the last round of cuts, we took large hits to business services, which is our accounting and payroll, etc. And with that came immense challenges in being able to get things processed on time. So we’ve learned rather quickly from that, that it needs to be an equal balance when we look at cuts.

Miller: Do you feel like you got that? I mean, first of all, the transparency that you were looking for, but also the balance that that you were hoping for?

TeBeest: This time, yes. And I think collectively, the shared governance partners and the administration have had some time to do some deep reflecting on SOU Forward, and what we felt might have gone right and what we felt we should address and change as we move forward with this new plan. So I do think this time we’ve had a lot more input and collaboration in the process.

Miller: In that same letter, you called on the university administration to take a 50% pay cut. The president did indeed ask the board of trustees to reduce his salary – not a full 50%, but significant: 20%. And last week they announced that they agreed to do that. That became public, I think it was two days before the announcement of financial exigency that we really talked about on Monday. What did you think of President Bailey’s decision?

TeBeest: I admired it. I admired his willingness to be willing to sacrifice something, to show people that he wants to have skin in the game and that it’s not everyone else that has to bear the burden of sacrifice.

Miller: Am I right that you said that you would take a corresponding cut to your own salary if he did that?

TeBeest: I did. I did agree to that. That was my challenge, that if the administration would do that, I would match.

Miller: And so you’re doing that?

TeBeest: I will.

Miller: As we talked about on Monday, the declaration of financial exigency allows the university to basically go around certain union provisions and gives them a lot more flexibility to make some immediate cuts, now. Does that apply to your union, as well as the faculty one?

TeBeest: It does not impact us the way that it will impact the faculty contract. For the faculty, it is going to impact primarily tenure, essentially declaring exigency voids tenure protections for faculty. For us, we don’t have that same language in our contract, the only thing exigency can really shift for us is notification time, which in current contract, we require a 30-day noticing of an employee that’s going to be laid off or potentially impacted. With exigency, they have the ability to lower that noticing to 15 days.

Miller: What have your communications with the faculty union been like here? I mean, as you said earlier in the first round of cuts that started in 2023, it was your union and the unrepresented staff who felt the brunt of the layoffs. This time it’s the other way around; it’s faculty. It’s not uncommon for there, within different organized staff groups, different unions, to be sometimes some tensions, especially if they’re played off one another. How would you describe the relationship right now between these different unions?

TeBeest: Well, first I’ll say I have great empathy for what everyone is going through right now, being that we’ve we’ve already been through this once. It is a hard process. It is an emotional process. And it’s daunting that we have to make these types of choices. I will say that I’m very fortunate to be at this particular institution where our shared governance partners – whether that’s the faculty union, the staff assembly, the faculty senate or our student governor, governance partners – we have all developed a very close relationship, and have tried to support and build each other up as much as possible. I believe in other institutions you tend to see them pitted against each other. And we try very hard to not do that, to be allies and work together instead of being enemies in this process.

Miller: I have to say that is maybe the most surprising thing about this whole story right now. I mean, our listeners, people have been following news about labor negotiations or strikes, whether it’s in education or in healthcare, in other places, I don’t remember the last time that I talked to, in this case, both a high-level administration official and the head of a union at a time when huge cuts are being made. And I heard such a positive version of the human relationship side of this. What’s behind it? How do you explain this?

TeBeest: I think a lot of that is just our culture. I’ll give that to President Bailey as a leader in helping cultivate that culture. Labor, whether it’s us in the faculty union or another union, we should not be against each other. We are wanting the same thing and in order to do that, elevating each other’s voices is the best way to get there.

Miller: But that’s separate from having faith in the direction … Maybe it’s not fully separate, but it’s not identical to having faith in the direction that the leaders of a particular institution are taking you in. Do you feel like these cuts and the vision outlined by the president will put your university on a better path?

TeBeest: President Bailey is retired military and I’m a military spouse, so I think we all live by the motto, “prepare for the worst and hope for the best.” And that’s kind of where we’re at. I need and want to be hopeful that this is going to come out better on the other side. We need that in order to get through this process. It’s unfortunate. There have been an extreme amount of variables that have been thrown at us that are not of our control, whether it was state funding reductions over the last decade, to the FAFSA debacle that rolled out in ‘23, to the current changes that are going to be coming with federal changes to everything from financial aid, to Pell grants, to work study. And also, the enrollment cliff that we’re looking at, we know that that’s coming.

So a lot of those things are definitely outside of our control, so I do believe we’re all working together to try to find a plan that will put us in a position that we can succeed with all of these challenges.

Miller: Sage, thanks very much.

TeBeest: Thank you for having me.

Miller: Sage TeBeest is the president of the union that represents classified staff at Southern Oregon University. She joined us to talk about major proposed cuts at SOU.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.