Union members from across the University of Maine System are asking for the administration to review its own spending and transparency before enforcing millions of dollars in cuts that could include layoffs.
In an email to University of Maine and University of Maine at Machias faculty last week titled “We Didn’t Cause the Budget Crisis,” union leaders outlined their lack of confidence with administrators.
The email came in the wake of UMaine and UMaine at Machias announcing a $19 million budget shortfall on Sept. 18 for the 2027-28 fiscal year. About $5.7 million of that gap would require layoffs and retrenchment if no other solution is found, UMaine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy and Provost Gabriel Paquette said in a letter to the UMaine community.
Faculty were told about the layoffs, retrenchments and $10 million budget cut to academic affairs through an email, according to the union leaders’ message. The news “further erodes confidence in campus leadership and senior administrators’ ability to make sound fiscal decisions,” according to the email.
A letter from UMaine’s faculty senate to administrators last year shared similar concerns.
Faculty, staff and students are not the source of the budget shortfall but are going to be the ones affected, according to the email. Campus leaders “must accept accountability rather than shifting the burden onto the workers who sustain the university’s primary mission,” it said.
Part of that accountability includes the faculty’s call for administrators to review their own spending for possible savings. As it’s currently proposed, early-career positions in multiple departments may be cut and change what education UMaine can give students, said University of Maine Professional Staff Association President Sara Abronze.
“We’re not cutting the fat anymore. We’re starting to cut into the bone, and we’re not going to have the same university system unless something changes soon, and that’s our real fear,” Abronze, one of the union leaders who collaborated on the email, told the Bangor Daily News.
Transparency and communication throughout the budget process is needed for administrators and faculty to find a long-term solution. University leaders have not taken steps to work together or communicate, according to the email.
The campus “must all work together to lead UMaine into an era of budgetary stability, sustainability, and ultimately, institutional strength,” Ferrini-Mundy and Paquette said in their Sept. 18 letter.
Although the email focuses on what UMaine administrators can do, it also lays out how other state officials should be included in the process.
UMaine has gotten less money from the state in recent decades despite union members speaking with legislators about the system’s ability to educate Mainers, according to the email.
“I think there’s this big misunderstanding that higher ed is not worth the money right now, which I don’t think is the case,” Abronze said. “I think we’re well worth the money, and we need to do more to get Maine to understand that.”