UCI Leadership: Bring back John Salinas and Sandi Pearson!
Dear UCI Leadership,
We urge you to bring back John Salinas and Sandi Pearson. They are both BTSA 2 help desk analysts for their respective academic units, the School of Social Ecology and the Department of Continuing Education. Both have served UCI and their users loyally for over 16 years. Both are cherished members of the UCI community.
UCI and local leadership across campus cannot use uncertainties around funding or any other crisis as a pretext to layoff critical support staff. In both of these cases, there is now no longer any BTSA or helpdesk analyst in their respective operations. Most outrageously, in Sandi Pearson’s case, the unit has kept on its student IT workers at full-time schedules and forced her to train her own replacements among the remaining full-time staff in her last weeks at work. What explains this level of cruelty? How are IT staff at UCI supposed to think they are valued by their employer when they see stories like this?
These cuts have tremendously set back the operations of their respective units. It is obvious to everyone who understands how IT at UCI actually functions that cuts must be made where cuts are possible. It is simply infeasible and unjust to cut the only employees who serve in this critical operational role that is filled at every other unit across campus besides, now, these two.
We call on leadership to reverse John’s and Sandi’s layoffs, and if cuts must be made, then find cuts where they actually make sense—not where they will greatly set back faculty, students, research, and teaching.
Bring back John and Sandi!
Use the form below to
Sign our new petition* for John and Sandi
RSVP for our upcoming action on Wed., 7/23 @ 1 pm in front of the UCI Ecology I Building
*Please go ahead and sign this new petition even if you recently signed our previous petition. Thank you for your support!