Reassurance or End Date?

Email circulated yesterday evening below. On the one hand, it provides assurance. On the other hand, it has an end date: June 30. That's less than three months from now.

To the UC community:

We write today to acknowledge a new reality and to announce our decision to do all we can to support our UC family during this unprecedented time.

The novel coronavirus has now affected everyone on the planet in some way, and by all indications, we can expect more disruption in the weeks ahead. We are keenly aware of the health concerns and economic uncertainty weighing on the entire University community. Let us assure you: we are in this together.

Our people are the heart of the University of California and allow UC to live up to our aspirations and values. As we face the personal and professional challenges of the day, we are committed to doing all we can to alleviate concerns about income or job stability during this time.

To that end, today we collectively announce that there will be no COVID-19 related layoffs for all career employees through the fiscal year ending on June 30, 2020.

Providing pay and health and welfare benefits during this period will allow employees to more effectively care for themselves and their families as we all support California and the nation by staying home and doing our part to reduce the spread of this virus.

To those of you who are performing critical services in the community, caring for our patients and continuing to teach and conduct research, we could not be more grateful for your hard work, courage, and dedication to serving the public good in this turbulent time.

To UC employees on our campuses, administrative offices, and clinical settings who are unable to work because of facility closures, curtailed operations, or other disruptions due to COVID- 19, we are committed to supporting you as long as we are able. We look forward to working with our unions to redeploy workers to areas of need and keep as many employees working as possible.

While there may still be reductions in hours, and in some cases staff, as a part of our typical student and career employee summer staffing and clinical workforce adjustments, we are committed to doing our best to keep people earning a paycheck whenever possible. The University will also begin conversations with various employee groups to consider the conditions under which we may be able to extend this promise of job protection beyond June 30th, should that be necessary.

Local HR departments will be working in real time to address questions from employees. We cannot predict exactly how the situation will evolve, or what future measures we may need to take to uphold our mission. What we do know is that we will face that future with courage and find our way together.

Fiat lux,