University of Akron reinstates two professors after ‘questionable’ layoffs criticized

Two University of Akron faculty members who were among several dozen laid off early in the pandemic two years ago have won back their jobs.

The UA Board of Trustees on Wednesday agreed to reinstate dance professor Robin Pritchard and engineering professor Sue Ramlo.

The board’s decision follows a ruling by two independent arbitrators, who sided with the faculty union and called the reasons given for the Prichard’s and Ramlo’s layoffs “mistaken” or “questionable at best.”

Ramlo and Pritchard will receive back pay and missed benefits, including tuition or health care paid out-of-pocket the past two years.

“My heart goes out to everybody who was laid off in 2020 because no one deserved it,” Prichard said. “No one deserved what the university of Akron did.”

How the University of Akron layoffs happened

The two professors were among 113 faculty originally targeted for layoffs in May 2020 as university officials braced for what was then projected to be a $65 million budget shortfall.

According to figures provided by UA on Wednesday, officials nearly balanced the budget in 2020, ending that year down $1.4 million. After an influx of stimulus funds, the university recorded a $39.7 million surplus in 2021. But there’s a $5.7 million shortfall projected for 2022 followed by another deficit of $24.7 million in 2023.

Revenue continues to slip. Enrollment was already falling 6-7% annually before the pandemic upended higher education. It fell again by 9% in 2021.

During the pandemic hit, the university also was in the midst of a campus-wide reorganization effort that would ultimately eliminate six colleges and entire programs and shuffle faculty and their courses into other departments. Amid the restructuring, university leadership asked college deans to trim their budgets by 25%, largely by eliminating positions.

After a series of negotiations with the unions, the list of 113 faculty members identified for layoffs was reduced to 96, of which 30 retired early, allowing them to cash out sick days.

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The remaining 66 faculty members, mostly represented by the Akron Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), quickly filed a class-action grievance pursuant to the collective bargaining agreement, which was up for renegotiation at the time.

The union tried, but failed, in one fell swoop to spare everyone from the cuts.

An arbitrator in September 2020 affirmed the university’s right to circumvent normal layoff procedures in the face of “catastrophic circumstances … beyond the control of the University,” The mass layoff was deemed justified to balance the budget in extraordinary times during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Deciding who to cut was an arduous and time-constrained task compounded by the university’s ongoing reorganization, as arbitrator Ronald F. Talarico described in his May decision that would force the university to reinstate Ramlo.

“The University had to make the extremely difficult decision of cutting dozens of faculty members who had done nothing to deserve such a fate, and the decision had to be implemented during a time of tremendous social and economic convulsion, not to mention confusion and uncertainty as the pandemic crisis deepened,” Talarico wrote.

After the class-action grievance didn’t move forward, members individually took their cases to the union, which examined the reasons the university gave for placing each professor on the layoff list. Ramlo, who served as vice president of the union prior to her layoff, coordinated an email list that connected those laid off with step-by-step advice on how to prepare and argue their cases for arbitration.

UA faculty union opts to take up two professors’ cases

Toni Bisconti, who was elected president of the local chapter of the AAUP in May 2021, said about 15 members petitioned the union’s executive committee, which voted on whether to arbitrate each case.

“With Sue and Robin, which are the only two we’ve arbitrated, we felt the cases were strong enough,” Bisconti said this week. “We felt as thought the university could not meet its burden of proof” in defending the reasons given for laying off either professor.

Arbitration, on top of filing the class action grievances, is not cheap. Bisconti said fighting to the end for Ramlo and Pritchard “further reduced our funds substantially.”

“I am very grateful that the union supported my case and took it forward. I know it took a lot of money and a lot of resources,” Pritchard said.

Ramlo believes other professors had a good shot at winning back their jobs, too, based on how hard the arbitrators came down hard on university officials who contradicted themselves, relied on inaccurate information or misunderstood the work of professors as the layoff list was assembled.

The university did not comment, other than to confirm the reinstatements of Pritchard and Ramlo Wednesday pursuant to the arbitrator’s rulings.

“Even though we feel really proud of the two we choose [to arbitrate], I think it just demonstrates that we choose right, that we chose accurately,” Bisconti said. “I don’t think that we would go back and take more to arbitration, because I don’t think we’d win.”

Of the 66 laid off, three have been offered their jobs back, Bisconti said. One rejected the offers.

Sue Ramlo Award by dhlivingston on Scribd

Pritchard’s arbitration award

Arbitrator Jacquelin F. Drucker found that the “theories and actions of management” to cut costs and take the Dance Program in a “new direction” were “somewhat sloppy and at times contradictory.”

The union noted, for example, how the university was eliminating Pritchard, its senior faculty member, while trying to hire two others in the Dance Program. Management said it wanted to maintain the basic offering of ballet technique.

“[T]he goal was logical, but the underlying assumptions and evaluations as to what was required for appropriate faculty were misguided,” Drucker said.

Pritchard was let go in 2020. The labor contract expiring that year required the university to hire her back, should her eliminated teaching position be reinstated. The university sought in October 2020 to hire a full time tenure-track associate or full professor of Dance who would start in August 2021.

The university struggled to fill that position, Pritchard explained, so the qualifications and starting salary were lowered.

In laying off Pritchard while hiring others, the arbitrator found that “the two positions are similar” and that Pritchard “was well qualified” for either.

Pritchard had been an assistant professor of dance since 2009 and became a tenured professor in 2015. Prior to woking at UA, she was an associate professor of dance at Columbia College, where she taught advanced ballet and other technique. The arbitrator decided that a vote by trustees to promote her to full professor in April 2020 was “a near certainty … had the pandemic not intervened.”

Yet in compiling their layoff list, Pritchard’s “extensive experience” was “unknown to or misunderstood by Management’s decision-makers, who lacked an understanding of some fundamental concepts of dance education and training,” Drucker wrote.

Pritchard didn’t apply for the new positions. She didn’t have to, the arbitrator found. The collective bargaining agreement requires that similar positions “shall be offered” to employees laid off in the previous three years.

Ramlo’s arbitration award

Ramlo worked in the College of Applied Science in Technology before it was consolidated in May 2020 into the College of Engineering and Polymer Sciences.

After 25 years at UA, she was let go in the summer of 2020 as a tenured faculty member in the Department of Engineering and Science Technology.

The union pressed the administration to detail the reasons for the dismissal, which are included in a documents called “Position Abolishment Forms.” The union contended that the reasons listed in Ramlo’s form were “in large part, inaccurate, incorrect or outright false.”

The AAUF said Ramlo was being targeted for her work in the union, where she served as vice president prior to her termination. Arbitrator Talarico was unconvinced that Ramlo’s role or membership in the union factored into her termination.

The administration, instead, argued that Ramlo’s courses were redundant and could be eliminated. The arbitrator, however, found that the university still offered the courses in the spring of 2022.

Ramlo also was the highest paid in her department, another reason administrators gave for laying her off. But she would have been the lowest paid after her department was consolidated into the Physics Department, where another employee was eliminated because he was “one of the most junior faculty members.”

The arbitrator criticized the administration’s contradictory logic, laying off two employees because they made the most or the least in their respective departments.

“I was picked for the RIF [reduction in force] list,” Ramlo summarized in a phone conversation with the Beacon Journal, “and then they worked backwards to figure out the reasons why.”

Ramlo’s Position Abolishment Form, the arbitrator concluded, was founded on “multiple critical factual errors and also internally conflicting statements about how Dr. Ramlo’s position came to be on the RIF list.”

“At no point, as near as can be determined from this record, did the University address the discrepancies raised by the Union,” Talarico concluded after reviewing the evidence.

Ramlo was scheduled to teach in the fall of 2020 prior to being laid off. After applying for and being denied work following her termination, she had to involve the union to get teaching contracts for the spring and summer of 2021, according to the arbitrator’s finding.

During the arbitration, like other professors laid off, she has worked 25% less while earning 70% less.

Prichard Award by dhlivingston on Scribd

Reach Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3792.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: UA trustees forced by arbitration to reinstate two laid off professors