Netzereab Seoire is a soft-spoken man. But last Thursday, the University of Washington Board of Regents heard his message loud and clear.
Seoire told the regents that he works on the UW's evening shift. His wife works on campus, too, but during the day. If the facilities department gets its way and he and 84 other janitors are moved to the day shift, he said, there will be no one with his children from 3:30 to 9 in the morning -- a time of day, he said, where there is no child care to be had.
"I don't know what I am going to do with my kids," Seoire told the board. "Please, let me just stay in this evening shift."
It was a plea repeated many times at an often contentious public hearing the regents held May 28 on how the university plans to fill a $94 million budget gap caused by this year's cut in state funding. To save money, the administration has proposed cutting the school's swim program, moving all its janitors to the day shift, halving the budget of the Women's Center and closing six departmental libraries.
Those are a few of the cuts that 200 protesters rallied against on Red Square prior to the hearing. Inside Kane Hall, many told the regents that the cuts fall disproportionately on minorities and women, with some calling on the regents to stop the cuts, resign in protest or, at the very least, pass a resolution opposing them.
A group called the Anti-Budget Cuts Coalition also presented the regents with an alternative budget that, among other things, calls for capping the salaries of 150 university administrators at $150,000 each, for a savings of $3.6 million -- enough, the coalition says, to save the libraries or the Women's Center.
Seoire and other janitors with the Washington Federation of State Employees told the regents that moving the janitors to the day shift would only create havoc in their families' lives without saving the university much money.
The savings, said union member Ken Mills, is expected to come from the extra 60 cents per hour that janitors on the swing shift make, or about $175,000. But in negotiations with the administration, Mills said, the union has already offered to give up the differential in order to keep the custodians on evenings. But the answer was no, he said; the janitors would be moved to days June 1 -- a date the university now says it has postponed to July 1.
Roughly $40,000 to $50,000 is expected to be saved in the efficiency of having everyone on days, said union negotiator Cecil Tibbetts, but it would be better to cut one janitor, he said, than disrupt the lives of 85 families.
"The small savings that they would gain in addition to the shift differential by moving these people does not justify the cost in human terms," Tibbetts said. "We have [families with] both husbands and wives would be on days and the shift would start at five in the morning when it's impossible to get daycare -- I've made the calls myself to check on the resource. It does not exist."
Craig Cole, chair of the regents, said after the meeting that he didn't have enough data to comment on whether the cuts fell disproportionately on women and minorities and sees little point in passing a resolution for show when the regents vote on the budget cuts June 11
"I don't think we could have put on much more of a show during the session of the legislature because we were down there swinging," Cole said of the regents' lobbying efforts.
"A little disproportionality here or there is not something that we're going to go around and fix. That's not the way to deal with the budget," said regent Bill Gates Sr., father of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. "We can't restore swimming or the women's center without having some place to find the funds to do that."