When geography professor Altha Cravey heard the University is looking for two full-time “orientation/layoff coordinators,” she was shocked.
“I couldn’t quite believe my ears,” Cravey said. She tweeted out the link to notify others of the positions.
Cravey said she has been worried about the University’s mentality toward its employees for a while now. Seeing the two open positions increased her concerns.
Shannon Brien, Student Action with Workers co-chairperson, said UNC employees have had concerns similar to Cravey’s for a couple of decades. She said their worries include job stability and not feeling valued by the University.
The most recent example of those concerns, Brien said, is the possibility of UNC Student Stores being privatized. Three months ago, Follett, a company that owns more than a thousand student stores nationwide, submitted a proposal to lease Student Stores.
Follett, if it leases the bookstore, says it would pay the University $3 million annually and attempt to save millions of dollars with cheaper books.
Brien said the University’s need to cut back financially often seems to take priority over the intangible value of UNC faculty and staff.
She said the pressure to save money is understandable, since state funding has decreased so drastically in recent years. The North Carolina state legislature cut UNC’s academic affairs budget by more than $22 million from 2014-15 in their final budget deal, released last month.
“There really is this concern that they’re doing it just for the sake of the bottom line,” Brien said. “And not really looking at the University as an academic institution that needs to support faculty research and a place that sustains an entire community.”
