Jordan Clark, GNAC Player of the Week
Geese, the review
Veterans Day parade downtown
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November 13, 2025
Vol. 132 NO. 7
By the students, for the students
CWU UNION PRESIDENTS RESPOND TO STAFFING ATTRITION:
“IT CANNOT BE UNDERSTATED THE TOLL THE ATTRITION IS TAKING ON ALL STAFF”
CWU as seen from above. (Photo courtesy of CWU Flickr)
Brandon Mattesich Co-Editor-In-Chief
O
ver the past few years, CWU has taken an attrition approach to decreasing staffing num- “Western’s doing layoffs. bers at the university, in response to lower Central has been doing that enrollment and lower state budgets. Across the state, different universities have approached these for years. They’re just calling staffing reductions differently, with Western Washington University notably facing campus-wide layoffs in response to the decreased state budgets. -Terll Stone, WFSE chapter president While the general consensus across the assorted union chapter presidents at Central has been that they would rather face attrition than layoffs, the nuance that as a layoff, because what they did is they just didn’t of what attrition effects on CWU’s campus has led to renew their contracts.” The long term effects of this type of attrition is where mixed reactions from staff and faculty alike. Gabriel pointed most of her concern. “If people are resigning from Central, if they’re not being renewed, Faculty Non-Renewals faculty who have multiple job opportunities may look A bulk of the recent attrition at Central, according to not just at the cost of living in Ellensburg, but at the Kara Gabriel, chapter president of the United Faculty stability of jobs in Central, and may think twice about of Central (UFC), has come from non-renewals. Some coming, and that’s my concern,” Gabriel said. “I want instructional staff at the university are on either quarter the best faculty possible for our students, and I think long, year long, or multiyear contracts, and when those we have it now, but I’m looking to the future, and I contracts are up, the school can either choose to renew want us to continue to have a good reputation.” them, continuing their employment, or not renew Stress on Administrative Assistants them, effectively letting them go from the university. “We’ve definitely seen a lot of attrition of faculty,” Both UFC and WFSE shared a common sentiment, Gabriel said. “That comes from resignations, faculty one that was echoed by Ray Wells, chapter president who are moving on to other institutions. That is from retirements, folks who are deciding to retire and their of the Public School Employees of Washington (PSE): positions are not necessarily being filled. And then we that the bulk of the stress of attrition, at this time, is falling on administrative assistants. also have what are called non-renewals.” According to Wells, the attrition model has caused inAlthough it’s nationally fairly common to not renew, the positions at Central that are not being renewed creased workloads for these assistants. “We have adminhave often been career positions that are now left va- istrative assistants in each of the colleges who are covercant. “It’s common in higher education for those types ing at least a second department,” Wells said. “It’s pretty of jobs to help fill gaps in Ellensburg,” Gabriel contin- much a different model in each of the colleges. [The] ued. “Those tended to be folks who stayed, though, College of Business currently has one administrative who live in Ellensburg and have been here for decades. assistant covering all four departments, and since those It has been hard to see folks that we’ve worked with for include two departments that each have two co-chairs, they’re reporting to six chairs within four departments, decades not be renewed.” Terll Stone, chapter president of the Washington and all of the faculty of that department that they have Federation of State Employees (WFSE), aligned to work with, and all the students in that college [they] non-renewals with layoffs. “Western’s doing layoffs. serve. It’s a huge, huge ask for them.” Stone talked about how his wife, who is a member Central has been doing that for years. They’re just calling it something different,” Stone said. “Central just of PSE, has personally experienced the effects of the laid off a ton of adjuncts last year, and they don’t deem increased workloads being placed on administrative
it something different.”
assistants. “My wife, she moved departments, so now there’s no longer a secretary in the computer science department,” Stone said. “So all the work that she used to do for computer science still needs to be done, but they chose not to refill that position. So all that work that was being done by my wife … is passed to somebody else … and right now the math department secretary is doing some of that work. Now that secretary, or that administrative assistant, has a lot of backing from their department chair, so what they’re taking on is very limited. But you have administrative assistants that are doing the full workload of two departments under one FTE of pay.” “They’re essentially doing the work of two people because one person left,” Stone continued. “You’ve got others that are doing it for three departments, four departments. The work still has to be done, but they’re passing it off to one person to do two people’s work. Well, then that one person starts getting in trouble for not getting all the work done, or getting talked to for not getting all the work done. So they start feeling awful at work. Their stress level goes up, and it’s just untenable. So then they quit.” “Then it compounds, because now you have a person that was doing two departments’ worth of work leaving, that’s two departments’ worth of work that still needs to be done … and so it just keeps compounding like that at the lowest level,” Stone said. Other Impacts on Campus The effects of the attrition model are not just limited to faculty and administrative assistants however, something all three union chapter presidents made clear. “There’s an [empty] instructional classroom technical specialist [position] in biology, and that hasn’t yet been filled and has been sitting vacant for a few months now,” Wells said.
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