Dear President Sarah Rosen Wartell,

Over the past month, the Urban Institute Employees’ Union, along with all of Urban, has been facing the uncertainty and chaos of our current political moment. Our members have shared their anxiety and distress over their future at Urban and fear around the administration’s heightened attacks on their or their loved ones’ identities and well-being.

Having worked closely with Yasmin and Kate to navigate these challenges, we understand that Urban is experiencing significant financial difficulties, in large part because of the recent executive orders and their impacts on current and future federal funding. We also understand that making some cuts—nonlabor and otherwise—is necessary for Urban’s survival. With that said, to the greatest degree possible, we urge you to take steps to minimize the proposed scope of unit layoffs.

Urban has built its reputation as a world-class research organization because of the work of our unit members, who play a role in everything from securing funding and winning contracts, managing payroll, troubleshooting our tech, managing projects from start to finish, conducting interviews in the field, analyzing data, writing and editing compelling products, designing our websites, creating beautiful data visualizations and illustrations, and engaging stakeholders and media. Our members are the Urban Institute, and we maintain that ensuring Urban’s future means making every effort to protect the staff who make our work possible.

We are sincerely grateful to hear about executive-level efforts to save costs, including your 24 percent voluntary pay reduction and the VP salary freezes. However, facing the devastating, unprecedented loss of such a significant share of our staff, we urge you and others in executive leadership to make sacrifices for the well-being of our organization and protect our members.

- We ask that you increase your pay reduction to at least 50 percent, which would remain well above the average for president and CEO salaries among our peer organizations. According to Urban’s 2023 990, such a reduction of roughly $250,000 could save up to four workers from being laid off. During financially challenging times, many presidents and CEOs have taken significant pay cuts. Notably, GM and Ford executives took a $1 annual salary during the 2008 financial crisis, and there are numerous similar examples from the height of the pandemic. The National Endowment for Democracy, a DC-based nongovernmental organization, announced significant cuts to executive staff pay in response to recent actions by the new administration, despite those individuals making significantly less than executives at Urban.
According to Urban’s 2023 990 [LINK: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/520880375/202442629349301044/full]

- We urge all of Urban’s vice presidents and senior staff making more than $200,000 to commit to pay reductions of at least 15%.

-We ask that Urban prioritize alternative cost savings options, such as temporarily reducing the automatic employer retirement contribution or establishing a temporary across-the-board reduction in time (e.g., all staff move to 90 percent), over mass layoffs.

-We request that the board consider a significant endowment draw for the purposes of reducing staff layoffs at a time of unprecedented competition in the nonprofit/policy ecosystem. Not only would laid-off staff be looking for jobs alongside thousands of former Biden administration political staff, as is typical during a transition, but the mass terminations of longtime federal workers and the ripple effects on other nonprofits losing their own federal funding have also flooded the job market. Retaining more staff, even temporarily for the market to settle, could significantly reduce the stress and duration of unemployment. Moreover, the purpose of the endowment is to ensure the long-term sustainability of our organization: this stability relies on the security and expertise of our staff.

Rather than having our lowest-paid and most vulnerable employees bear the brunt of Urban’s financial crisis, it is critical for leadership to demonstrate that they too are willing to make sacrifices for our organization and take pay cuts to save Urbanites’ jobs. Our members are all so proud to work at Urban and are deeply committed to the organization’s future. In this moment of crisis, we ask that Urban show the same commitment to us.

Sincerely,
Urban Institute Employees’ Union