MADISON, Wis. — In an effort to manage financial challenges being brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Wisconsin Athletic Department announced Saturday morning it intends to implement a compensation and work reduction plan to include most of its employees.
According to the release, the plan will tentatively go into effect on May 18 and continue through July 25.
“Reducing compensation and work hours is obviously not something I want to see for any of our Badger Athletics family,” Director of Athletics Barry Alvarez said in a statement. “But we are facing the same financial challenges that other organizations across the country are. We are working hard to minimize the impact on our employees while responding to the realities of the situation created by the pandemic.”
College sports – and most sports in general - have been shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic since March 12.
Wisconsin Athletics' highest-earning employees will be asked to voluntarily incur a 15-percent reduction in pay over the next six months. A total of 25 people comprises this group, including Alvarez, head football coach Paul Chryst and head men's basketball coach Greg Gard. There will be no reduction in this group's work hours.
The compensation reductions for high earners combined with the pending Work-Share Program participation would save UW Athletics an estimated $2.8 million.
Chryst is the highest-paid UW athletics employee with a $3.85 million total salary including base pay and an additional compensation agreement. Gard was due to make $1.9 million in the 2019-20 school year. Alvarez makes $675,000 annually in base pay.
“I greatly appreciate our highest earners' willingness to consider voluntarily accepting a temporary reduction in pay,” Alvarez said, “as well as the rest of our staff who are sharing in this exercise by reducing their hours to help us navigate our way through these unprecedented times.”
Most employees will participate in the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development's Work-Share program (pending approval) and have their work hours reduced by either 20 or 50 percent. This includes approximately 350 employees who can apply for expanded unemployment benefits that in most cases offset lost wages through July 25. Use of the Work-Share Program allows UW Athletics to retain skilled employees by reducing work hours while allowing employees to supplement lost wages with unemployment benefits.
The majority of UW Athletics staff continue to work from home while the state's "Safer at Home" directive remains in effect and while the UW-Madison campus is temporarily closed.
UW previously said it was expecting a revenue shortfall of more than $4 million. Alvarez said publicly that UW is preparing for a plethora of scenarios for the fall: a full 2020-21 athletics season, a loss of fall sports and a loss of fall and winter sports.
