Sonoma State University notifies 51 workers of potential layoffs amid deficit, distance learning

Sonoma State University has told 51 employees they could be laid off this fall as the school wrestles with a multimillion dollar budget deficit and the ramp up to at least one semester of distance learning, forcing most students to live at home and many campus facilities to close or reduce operations.

The largest group of affected campus employees are cafeteria and food service workers, all 33 of whom were notified Friday that their last day could be Nov. 6 if SSU officials could not find a viable option to retain them while the coronavirus and its impacts persist.

An additional 13 personnel are performing arts technicians, including four employed at the Green Music Center. One accountant and four facilities workers also received notices, totaling almost 9% of the school’s roughly 600 staff members.

The layoff letters were among the first to be handed out in the 23-school California State University system, which is facing a $299 million drop in state funding in 2020-21 stemming from the economic fallout of the pandemic. SSU officials are preparing for a shortfall of at least $20 million.

SSU leaders told the affected employees that the layoffs were due to a lack of work given their role and how their departments will be transformed during a prolonged campus closure, said Robert Eyler, the university’s interim spokesman. The notices were the first step of a 90-day process where unions and campus officials can negotiate how many layoffs will be finalized, and who could potentially remain employed, he said.

“A lot has to be determined over the next 90 days,” said Eyler, an economics professor. “Will, for example, the federal budget come through and provide enough funding to reconfigure the (CSU) budget and finance the system? It is possible, on the positive side. That 90 days will provide time to figure that out.”

SSU did not make senior human resources staffers or administration officials available to elaborate on the layoff notices or the next steps.

Workers who are laid off will retain health benefits through the end of the year, Eyler said. The Rohnert Park-based university has about 7,300 students enrolled this fall ‒ down about 1,000 students from the past academic year, translating to a direct loss up to $24 million assuming full dorm, tuition and meal costs. Administrators haven’t ruled out if additional staff cuts will be needed, he said.

The unions that represent employees across several SSU departments said they were shocked by the move, and were skeptical of the rationale that the university was shedding staff due to a lack of work. They called for greater transparency from university leaders.

Gina Voight, who works in the Kinesiology department and is local chapter president of the CSU Employee Union, which serves 16,000 Cal State employees statewide, said she felt “blindsided” and “conned” after months of weekly meetings with university management to hash out labor protections.

The CSUEU and its nearly 400 local members were anticipating job cuts could happen, but her conversations with university representatives were under the premise of avoiding layoffs, she said.

“The whole idea was to keep the paychecks and benefits flowing and food on the table,” Voight said. “We thought we were working toward that common good.”

The CSU system expects the pandemic will cause deep financial and operational challenges for at least three years, impacting an array of programs, from student newspapers and athletics to food service and bookstores, Chancellor Timothy P. White said in a July 20 statement.

For SSU, the largest drop in enrollment has occurred among incoming freshmen. As of July 21, only 969 freshmen were enrolled compared to 1,516 in fall 2019, Eyler said.

The university is following pandemic guidelines that mean it can safely house just 1,325 students on-campus, but estimates on how many will actually move in this fall will not be available until students show up two weeks from now, Eyler said. Classes, mostly slated for online, begin Aug. 18.

Among the many cutbacks that could affect students, a grab-and-go meal service plan was scrapped over the weekend and is being reevaluated, Eyler said.

CSU officials, citing the financial emergency, have told campus leaders they could have to access reserves to help balance their budgets. Sonoma State had a $149 million budget in 2019-20, more than half of which came from state funding.

SSU’s interim provost and vice president of academic affairs, Karen Moranski, said in a letter last month the university had approved the use of $1 million of its $2.2 million in operating reserves, but still has to come up with a total of $15.2 million in cuts.

“We are still working to find ways to close our current budget gap, which is also impacted by our reduced enrollment,” she said.

Given the financial woes, union leaders say the are unconvinced that a work shortage ‒ and not budgetary pressure ‒ prompted the layoff notices. Teamsters union representative Jose Fuentes, who oversees workers at 11 campuses including Sonoma State, said the union will provide alternative proposals to try and avoid job losses.

“This came to a surprise how quickly Sonoma moved to layoffs,“ Fuentes said. ”They’re saying there’s no more work, which we don’t think is factual. They could have taken other measures before moving straight to layoffs, like our contract states.”

You can reach Staff Writer Yousef Baig at 707-521-5390 or yousef.baig@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @YousefBaig.