Maintenance, cleaning crews feeling pinch of university budget cutbacks

IOWA CITY - Maintenance staff, custodians, campus grounds crew and clerical workers are the employee ranks that have taken the biggest hits at Iowa's three regent universities, after state budget cuts in recent years led to work force reductions.

Officials at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa say they've tried to keep the work force cuts from impacting classrooms and public spaces. But in many cases it has led to less frequent cleaning, maintenance and trash removal for UI offices and longer waits for things like building fixes and snow removal.

“We had to shift our services to match the new budget realities,” David Miller, ISU associate vice president for facilities, said. “We had to get leaner out of necessity.”

ISU President Gregory Geoffroy, in asking state legislators recently for increased funds next year, said the work force cuts in the facilities and maintenance areas had left the university “at absolute bare bones for what we need to maintain our campus.”

From fiscal 2009 to fiscal 2010, the merit category of employees dropped by nearly 10 percent at ISU and by 4 percent at the UI. Merit employees include custodians, maintenance workers and grounds crew.

UNI tracks employee groups differently, but saw losses of almost 6 percent to the secretarial/clerical work force and more than an 8 percent decrease in skilled craft jobs from 2009 to 2010.

The UI and ISU track “full-time equivalent” numbers, while UNI tracks the actual number of employees.

The UI and ISU also saw decreases from 2009 to 2010 of 1.3 percent and 6 percent, respectively, in the professional and scientific job category, referred to as P&S, which includes administrative staff and researchers. UNI's professional and scientific ranks grew slightly in that time.

Leaders at the three universities said they tried to protect faculty numbers during the budget cuts due to growing enrollments and the desire to limit negative impacts to the student experience. The 2009 to 2010 numbers show slight declines in tenure-track faculty at the UI and ISU.

Officials at the three universities, in trimming nearly $60 million last fiscal year due to state budget cuts, tried to avoid layoffs. ISU did have some forced layoffs, but the universities relied most on several early retirement windows to reduce staff.

At the three universities, 912 employees, mostly staff and a few faculty, took early retirement through the special programs. The number of employees not replaced was 42 percent at the UI, 54 percent at ISU and 44 percent at UNI.

From 2001 to 2010, total job numbers across all categories decreased 3.6 percent at ISU and 2.6 percent at UNI. The UI saw a jobs increase of nearly 10 percent in those 10 years, but that's when looking at jobs funding by all sources, Susan Buckley, UI vice president for human resources, said. That was fueled by growth in sponsored research, information technology and expansion at UI Hospitals and Clinics, she said.

But jobs supported by the UI general-education fund, excluding those supported with external funds or research or grants and contract dollars, decreased more than 5 percent from 2001 to 2010.

“Those are two different stories, in a way,” Buckley said.

---- Looking at 10-year job numbers from the universities, the merit employee work force showed by far the biggest losses, from 11 percent to 35 percent, from 2001 to 2010.

“We just don't have the support staff that we had five to 10 years ago,” Tom Schellhardt, vice president for administration and financial services at UNI, said. “The No. 1 result is that our deferred maintenance has gone up. Over time it will catch up with us.”

At the UI, employee offices and areas that aren't considered public spaces are now cleaned and have trash removed monthly, instead of biweekly. At ISU, an effort to avoid overtime means 2 inches of snow or less isn't removed overnight, but instead dealt with during regular work hours. ISU also has stopped mowing some outer edges of campus, Miller said

Job cuts to custodial staff over the past 10 years means that each ISU custodian now cleans more than 60,000 square feet of campus space, Miller said.

At the UI, custodians clean about 36,000 square feet each, an increase of 25 percent over a 10-year period, Don Guckert, UI director of facilities management, said.

The universities continue to add campus space and new buildings as the custodial ranks decrease, meaning each worker is responsible for more area, officials at all three universities said.

Staff members understand that growing enrollment meant there was a greater effort to avoid faculty cuts, Mark Clarridge, president of ISU's Professional and Scientific Council, said. But the reduced work force has led to increased stress as employees in many areas are stretched thin, said Clarridge, a system support specialist with Ames Lab at ISU.

“The biggest hit that we see is in morale,” he said. “We're working harder than before, our work ethic has us trying to keep our service levels the same as they've always been. But it's starting to wear on people.”

ISU President Geoffroy said after this week's state Board of Regents meeting that more state budget cuts for next year - still under discussion in the Legislature - would mean fewer employees.

“I think it's very, very likely that there will be a continued reduction in work force,” Geoffroy said.