October Economic Relief Memo

Dear WesternU Faculty, Staff, and Students,

During the past six months, I have had the honor, pleasure, and privilege to serve as your President. During that time, I have been so very impressed by the extraordinary talent that exists at our university: our students, faculty and staff are truly remarkable!

However, most meaningful to me has been the consistent display of humanism and loyalty by you in the face of unrelenting challenges, including a pandemic, changes in leadership, and the accompanying instability that uncertainty brought to the university.

However, at the same time, each of us has been confronted with demoralizing economic challenges, as we slide toward a likely national recession. Yet, you continue to sacrifice and selflessly exemplify WesternU’s most coveted core value, humanism, in your daily work.

Despite these admirable efforts, in our current economic climate, you are persistently challenged with rising inflation, ever increasing costs for groceries, exorbitant gasoline prices, unstable rent, and mortgages, soaring cost of living expenses, and volatility in financial markets, all of which contributes to further economic adversity for you, and hardship for many of your colleagues and friends in our extended WesternU family.

In the spirit of humanism, let us unite, exemplify the WesternU ethos, and convey the respect and gratitude that our highly valued employees so well deserve. It is long overdue! Let us stand together to mitigate the seemingly insurmountable burdens experienced by our WesternU family and enhance the quality of life for our employees. Let us strive to enhance employee morale and ensure that our students can remain focused on the primary reason they are here at WesternU: educational excellence, high quality mentorship, and career success.

Over the past several months, I have engaged in highly productive strategic plenary sessions with members of the University Executive Operations Team (UEOT), Deans Council, Faculty Senate, Staff Council, and Student Government Association regarding the issues that have negatively impacted the financial health and welfare of our employees and students.

Economic Relief

After thorough review and analysis with the WesternU Financial Services team, the University will take a multi-faceted and innovative approach to addressing three of the most daunting challenges facing our institution.

1. Parking: WesternU will reduce fees for regular parking permits, for both students and staff, by 50% through June 30, 2023. Please note, WesternU will still be charged by the city of Pomona for parking, but the University will absorb those costs to put money back into the pockets of students and employees.Fees for reserved parking spaces will not decrease.

• Fees for daily parking will not decrease.
• Students will receive a 50% refund for pre-paid parking permits through the Bursar’s Office on or before November 1, 2022.
• Employee general parking permit deductions will be reduced by 50% for the remainder of the fiscal year, effective on the October 28, 2022, payroll.
• Please note: Students can purchase the reduced rate parking permits using CASHNet. Employees may change their parking election at any time by logging into the employee portal at my.westernu.edu/, clicking on Self Services (BanWeb) and selecting Request Parking Pass from the Personal Information Services Menu.
• Questions regarding parking should be sent to parking@westernu.edu.

2. Midterm Salary Increase: Effective January 1, 2023, eligible employees will receive a pro-rated and annualized mid-year increase to their base pay.

• Members of the UEOT, the Deans Council, and employees making $200,000/year or more will not be eligible for this increase.
• For equity purposes, the increase will be in the form of a uniform annual dollar amount of $2,000 per employee, which will be added to each employee’s annual base pay and will be pro-rated based on employee’s full time equivalent status. As such, the increase percentage will vary, with the uniform dollar amount representing a larger percentage increase to those with the lowest salaries.

Summary:

1. The base salary increase represents a flat $2,000 for all employees under $200,000/year.
2. For employees earning $50,000/year, this amounts to an annualized base pay increase of 4%.
3. For employees earning just under $200,000/year, this amounts to an annual increase of 1%.
4. Across the board, all employees earning under $200,000/year will receive a base pay increase of $2000.
5. For part time employees, this amount will be pro-rated based on FTE.
6. As such, the increase percentage will vary, with the uniform dollar amount representing a larger percentage increase to those with the lowest salaries.

3. Minimum Wage Increase: Effective January 1, 2023, and after factoring the mid-year pay bump, we will increase the minimum wage for all part-time employees (including Federal Work Study students) to $17 per hour. You might recall that the minimum wage for full-time employees was increased to $17 per hour on July 1, 2022.

In addition, we are pleased to share that the following adjuvant benefits were approved this year:

• WesternU campuses will close for Winter Break at end-of-day Friday, December 16, 2022, and will re-open Tuesday morning on January 3, 2023. As in prior years, critical access will be allowed as necessary, notably for areas like Research, Financial Aid, IT, Health Centers, Financial Services, Human Resources, and University Advancement. We so appreciate these employees who work over the holiday break.
• Two new additional paid holidays are approved for the Academic Year 2023-2024: Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Juneteenth. This brings our total number of WesternU paid holidays to 12.

Please know that we will continue to explore how to make parking fees more equitable and move towards development of an institutional compensation philosophy to help guide our compensation planning in the future. This philosophy will allow us to identify and correct salary compression, equity, and alignment issues.

My very warmest regards,
Robin