We are in a crisis. As we deal with the unprecedented challenges brought on by COVID-19, we must ensure that Temple University continues to provide the high quality of education our students expect and deserve and to provide the sufficient working conditions and jobs for our members who serve them. The university must back up Chief Financial Officer Ken Kaiser’s words through its actions: “Our first obligation must be to our students and to preserving the university's ability to provide access to the highest quality education.”  

If you are not a member of the TAUP bargaining unit please indicate in the comment section if you are a: undergraduate student, graduate student, or ally.

OUR DEMANDS

The administration must make its commitment to the educational mission of the university clear by:  

• Using some of its $340 million in reserves to address the projected deficit for next year. It is a mistake to make employees suffer first before responsibly using some portion of the money due to the excellent work of those employees, money put aside for emergencies exactly like this.  

• Committing to no layoffs or furloughs for those directly associated with the educational mission of the university: faculty, librarians and academic professionals.

• Supporting faculty who have gone above and beyond to support students through the spring semester by:

• Providing one-year contract extensions for Non-Tenure Track faculty up for renewal in addition to the contractually required minimums.

• Creating a priority pool for adjuncts who have taught this term, giving them the right of first refusal for available classes in the Fall and Spring, with no loss of union eligibility for the upcoming academic year if they are not teaching.

• Maintaining course caps at 2019-20 levels.

• Not cancelling course sections that reach 50% enrollment or are required by students’ majors or degree programs.

We also call on Temple to:

• Compensate faculty for the exceptional amount of labor involved in converting to online instruction this term.

• Offer childcare/eldercare to faculty and staff who need it to perform their job during the pandemic.  

• Ensure that faculty retain intellectual property rights to the course materials they have created and put online.

THE FACTS

• The faculty, librarians, and academic professionals of TAUP have done an extraordinary amount of work this semester to ensure that students have a successful term. They have done so with no additional compensation under unprecedented and extreme circumstances.

• Temple is expecting a budget shortfall due to COVID-19 in the upcoming year of $45M - $60M.  

• Temple has asked full-time TAUP members to forgo their cost of living and merit raises in the upcoming year. This would generate approximately $4.5M.  

• Temple’s central administration and its colleges/schools have accumulated over $340,000,000 in unrestricted reserves. Thus far, they are refusing to commit to using these reserves to respond to this crisis. Their explanations for why they will not are not persuasive.

• Salaries for some administrators have been cut by 5% - 10% for now. There is no information about how long this cut will be in force, how much it will save, and whether the losses will be paid back. In contrast, the current request asks faculty to take cuts that will last throughout their careers; even deferring a raise has compounding effects.  

• Many faculty have been required to post materials on Canvas that they would not have placed there otherwise. This transition to online teaching raises serious Intellectual Property issues that threaten our faculty's livelihoods. This includes 1,100 adjuncts who have no promise of work at Temple in the future.

• Many departments and colleges have announced that course sizes will increase in the Fall. This will increase workload for full-time faculty and enable the administration to forego rehiring hard-working, experienced adjuncts.

Increased class sizes and workloads will reduce our ability to serve our students at a moment when they are going to have greater need for support. Faculty will already have additional work preparing classes whose prerequisites were taught in the spring. There is no question that saving money by raising class sizes will negatively affect the quality of the education that is provided by the university.

What the facts demonstrate is that the administration is prioritizing austerity over quality education. But they could set different priorities, and we urge them to do so in order to align their actions with their rhetoric.  

These critical measures will be necessary to preserve the quality of education that our students deserve, that our faculty have developed, and that our librarians and academic professionals support. With $340 million in reserves that can be used in times of emergency, we say that it’s time to spend it. As an institution of Higher Education, Temple must prove that quality education and people’s jobs are more important than possible temporary shifts in its bond rating.

Education at Temple University is at stake. We call on the institution to recognize this moment as one that necessitates investment in the university’s educational mission, not austerity.