Dear President Stokes, Provost Holloway and Regents of the University of New Mexico,
The omicron variant of SARS-COV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, has caused a surge of cases several times higher than ever seen before during the ongoing pandemic.
This has severely impacted our community by placing an enormous burden on healthcare facilities including the University hospital where some of our members work and have clinical placements. Additionally, a large number of students and employees are currently unable to participate in regular activities due to infection.
We insist that UNM act to protect graduate workers and other employees of the University as well as the students that we teach. As such, we demand that UNM do better and address its responsibility to support students, employees and the community toward reducing the adverse effects of the surge and stop placing the full burden on students and employees.
In response to the current COVID-19 surge, the administration of UNM now requires everyone coming to campus to wear a medical-grade mask as they are more effective than cloth masks at preventing the spread of the omicron variant.
While we welcome the University taking this precaution, medical-grade masks are expensive, difficult to acquire, and this places the financial burden on workers and students. The graduate workers that we represent are underpaid, often live below the poverty line and many have preexisting financial hardships related to the high costs of higher education.
We the United Graduate Workers of UNM demand that the administration take the following steps immediately to address the new masking requirements:
- Provide free medical grade masks, KN95 or better, at the entrances to buildings and main entrances to campus.
- Provide all employees of the University, including faculty, graduate workers, and facilities and maintenance staff, with a supply of KN95 or better masks since we are required to be on campus at this time.
- Provide a mask allowance to every student and employee each month when the mask requirement remains in effect to allow them to purchase appropriate masks.
- Stock N95 and KN95 masks for purchase at campus bookstores.
In addition to vaccination to prevent severe disease and masking to prevent transmission, a powerful tool at our disposal in the struggle against COVID-19 is testing. Fortunately, unlike in early 2020, several methods to test for COVID-19 are now available.
In the academic dispatch dated Jan. 14, 2021, Provost Holloway completely neglected to address COVID-19 testing despite using examples from other universities which use testing as a critical part of their overall COVID-19 response strategy.
For example, Duke University, whose example he used to support the current UNM policy, has a surveillance and testing system in place. UNM has no such system and requires employees and students to arrange their own tests which can be difficult to find and can require long wait times.
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We demand that UNM make COVID-19 rapid antigen tests available at campus bookstores to make them easier to access and that they allow students and employees to purchase them using the monthly allowance discussed above.
For a student or worker to return to regular activities after a positive COVID-19 test, the administration requires a clearance which can only be obtained by calling the UNM COVID-19 call center. Often students and employees are put on hold for hours, need to call multiple times and leave multiple messages before they can talk to a person who can help them through the process. This leads to an additional loss of work, missed educational opportunities and potential long-term consequences related to attendance all because of inefficiencies in the administration’s own system.
We demand that UNM expedite the process of getting a clearance to return to regular activities, ensuring it takes no longer than one hour and thus prevent this lost time. Moreover, we also demand that all communications regarding COVID-19 remind employees of paid sick leave available to them.
In summary, we have the following demands of UNM.
- Every week where the daily infection rate is above seven new cases per 100,000 population in a county with a UNM campus, UNM provides $10 to everyone's (in that campus) bursar's account as a mask-buying allowance.
- N95 and KN95 masks and rapid antigen test kits are made available at UNM bookstores.
- UNM maintains mask stations near the entrance to every building with a supply of N95 or KN95 masks.
- UNM provides a mask fit test facility at Student Health and Counseling (SHAC) to all students and employees.
- All communications regarding COVID-19 will remind employees of the paid sick leave available to them.
- The process of calling the COVID-19 call center to get approval to return to regular activity is streamlined so that the process takes less than one hour.
- UNM allows us to politely but firmly ask people who refuse to wear masks to leave the campus.
Sincerely,
The United Graduate Workers of UNM
UGW-UE 1466
The United Graduate Workers of UNM (UGW-UE local 1466) is the union of UNM’s graduate employees
