In a UW Institutional Communications press release, President Ed Seidel addressed the UW community regarding the shortage of employees across campus, which has caused strain on several UW organizations and businesses.
The State of Wyoming approved of a funding allocation of roughly $8 million to increase UW employee compensation. The first of these increases is set to take effect in July 2022.
“This appropriation is incredibly important and provides an opportunity for meaningful salary increases for employees. Although it is not enough to fix all needs, and we will be working hard to do more over time, it is a welcome step in the right direction,” President Seidel said in a letter to the campus community.
The measures come in the wake of several UW departments, organizations, and campus businesses expressing concerns over short staffing and high turnover.
Maintaining a consistent staff has been one of the main challenges that UW Dining Services has faced.
“We can get employees, but will they stay any longer? I can start making $15-16 an hour, but if the morale is not there, or the hours are not extended long enough to justify me working after class, it’s not going to help us,” Union food court Area Supervisor Violet Rubin-Hodges said.
Rolling Mill Cafè Area Supervisor Sydney Ernste shared her thoughts on the funding.
“From what I can tell it’s more that students can make more money at other places. For the most part, that’s why people quit,” Ernste said.
“It’s not that they can’t get the hours, it’s that ‘I can make an extra dollar or two doing the same thing at a different place.’”
One challenge of being a source of revenue for the university, but also serve the campus community, Ernste mentioned, is how it is hard to be both at the same time.
“We need to make money but we need to be a service and so it’s like which are we? Depending what you are, you have to tweak things. If we’re a service, then we need to increase hours and staff, but that just means more money is needed,” Ernste said.
Another drawback of not maintaining a consistent part-time staff is that full-time staff are unable to use some of the benefits privy to them.
“The difficult thing is that we get compensatory time,” CJ’s Area Supervisor Jenny Pursley said. “We don’t get overtime, and then we can’t take vacations or use our paid time off if we don’t have the staff.”
UW staff also expressed concerns of how the money will be distributed and what the consequences of that would be.
“The catch is that if they’re going to allocate $8 million to the whole UW staff and employees, what will go up later? Will we have to repay this in insurance or is our stock market going to go up or will our Wyoming retirement percentage go up next year?” Rubin-Hodges said.
