[The next in our "15 Ways to Take Your Furlough/Voluntary Pay Cut" series on higher education is contributed by Joyce Tolliver, associate professor of Spanish and Gender & Women's Studies as well as Chair of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee]Written by Joyce Tolliver (Spanish/GWS, Chair of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee)
Some recent scenes from the post-meltdown era:
1. Mid-December. My brother from out of state writes us all an email message to let us know that he has been let go from the office job where he has worked for over a decade, effective right after the holidays. Three weeks later, when there is a family emergency, my brother finds a cheap flight home. He has grown a beard, full of white and gray. “I’ll shave it once I start interviewing,” he says, “just in case there is anyone out there who believes I am ten years younger than I really am without this on my chin.” I mentally thank all the gods and goddesses that my brother has spent the last thirty years using much better moisturizer than I do. In spite of the fact that my best friend always unwittingly tests our friendship by calling him “your younger brother,” he is three years older than I am. And, in spite of his extensive knowledge, incisive intelligence, and many talents, he has no degree higher than high school.
2. January 5: I read the Mass Mail sent by Stan Ikenberry informing us that we will be getting two percent of our annual salary lopped off in the form of four furlough days, and that most administrators will be taking ten furlough days. I think about emailing my brother: “Guess what! I’m unemployed too! Kind of...one day a month...for four months!” Instead, I turn the laptop off, and send him a cheery card with a check inside.
3. January 6: I call my friend Moe, who works at one of the Cal State universities. I want to ask him how he is handling furloughs, find out how he handles the hit to his budget and the insult to his professional integrity. There is no answer, so I leave a message. He calls back the following week and leaves a message in return: “Sorry I missed you. I was at the beach. Furlough day!” When we do talk, I ask him about the pay cuts, about the lowered morale, about how outrageous it all is. “You think I should apply for a job in Illinois?” he asks. We both laugh. “No,” I say. “There’s no beach here.”
4. February 12: Paul, the plumber, stops by to take one more stab at fixing the toilet. It’s a Friday afternoon, and the third time I have made a point of being home on a weekday so I could face this domestic problem—not a big deal, really, since my schedule is flexible on Fridays and I work better at home than in my office anyway. He knows I teach at the U of I, and the talk turns to furloughs. He asks me how furloughs work, and then thinks about what I tell him: “So, you get to take a day off every month, you can decide which day, it can even be a Friday or a Monday—you could have, like, a long Valentines’ Day weekend—you don’t get paid for that day but you don’t lose your job for taking so much time off work?” I think about telling him that the key point here is that, hel-looo, I don’t get paid, clarifying that a two percent cut off my yearly salary actually means more like six percent off the paycheck for the furloughed period, reminding him that the papers I don’t grade and all the email messages I ignore one day will still be there waiting for me the next day. Instead, I just say, “Right.” He looks up at the ceiling, grins, then looks back down at me. “Awesome!”
* * *
Were there alternatives to furloughs? Without a doubt, and some were certainly worse. Were furloughs justified? There’s a legitimate debate about that. Some days, I do wonder whether the seventeen million was worth all the sturm und drang.
I have smart colleagues and dear friends who say furloughs are an assault on the faculty, short-sighted, an irresponsible overreaction, nothing but cynical political manipulation. I’ve said some of these things myself, not just to my colleagues but also to the folks who work over in the Henry Administration Building.
But I’ve never had the nerve to say these things to my brother, or to Paul, or to anyone in my family—working-class people who have walked picket lines in the mid-December snow, worrying about whether Santa was going to have to take a rain check this year; store managers and pipefitters and waitresses who are grateful for every day they don’t get an electronic pink slip, for every day they can still pay their mortgages and buy groceries; hard-working model employees who never could understand how it is that anyone who is not on the Supreme Court can really be guaranteed a job for life, barring major illegal screw-ups.
I don’t talk about furloughs or pay-cuts with my family. When I am sitting around the kitchen table with my brothers and sister and my stepmom, the conversation slows only when it’s time for the local weather report. But when the talk turns to the economy--to the son-in-law and the cousin and the neighbor who are not working, to the Medicare running out and the truck leaking oil, to the bills that will just have to sit awhile—then, for once, the professor shuts the heck up.
* * *
We are facing some of the same struggles now, the same anxieties, as Americans in almost every other industry and walk of life: the university is confronting the reality of downsizing, and this is a very unfamiliar and uncomfortable state for most of us. Despite that, we tenured faculty are perhaps the most privileged of all American workers. It’s all too easy for us to forget that.
Perhaps it will come as a surprise to know that one of the main reasons faculty governance groups accepted the idea of furloughs was out of a sense of solidarity with other university staff we knew would be suffering much more severe cuts, even losing their jobs. Furloughs for faculty would not prevent all those cuts, but we felt that it was important to do our part—and, in the best of circumstances, perhaps our small pay cut could keep some staff members working, even if it would not prevent all layoffs.
By now, it has become obvious that furloughs are far from the most difficult sacrifices and changes we will face in the weeks and months to come. But, given the unparalleled job security and other luxuries we now take for granted, it strikes me as a parody of a certain kind of watered-down Marxism to think that we are exploited or oppressed. We are, in fact, incredibly fortunate.
And one aspect of our good fortune is that elected representatives of the faculty are, at present, listened to and respected by the people who are ultimately responsible for administrative decisions; there is a codified structure that allows us to express our concerns as professionals and as core members of this campus community. For many years, and most intensely in the past few months, I have committed myself to the primary venue in which that happens: the Senate and its framework of shared governance. I have accepted the responsibility of keeping the conversation with the administration going in order to serve and advance the interests of faculty. I know this structure works, because I have seen it work to the benefit of faculty, staff, and students across many, many issues over the years. And we need it all the more now.
The budget crisis is real, and all signs are that it will get worse before it gets better. As in any crisis, it is urgent that we pay close attention to how we use our collective and individual energies. We cannot afford to lose perspective; neither can we afford the luxury of fractiousness.
And we cannot afford the luxury of staying outside the conversation, or of limiting our conversations to those who already think as we do. If we want to influence the shape of the change that will occur on our campus—as we must-- we have got to stay at the table, even when those seats at the table become hard, and when the conversation becomes uncomfortable. Now, and even more in the months to come, we will need to work hard at creating calm, collaborative conversations with colleagues in our units, across campus, and across the three campuses, so that we can decide together how we are going to protect the generation of the sorts of knowledge that transform our culture and the lives of individuals--and how to keep access to that knowledge open to qualified students who do not come from backgrounds of privilege.
In order to make that multifaceted decision, we’ll have to let go of the desire to place protection of our own disciplinary turf above all other concerns, and let go of the rhetoric of blame. That is, we will have to talk, passionately but respectfully, to those who need to hear our messages. And we will have to truly listen, to attend, in silence for just a moment, to those whose voices may not have entered our conversations before. Our collective survival depends on it.