On February 19th, 2021. the University of North Texas sent out an email that notified workers of the school’s decision to not pay hourly employees for scheduled work that a statewide emergency canceled for most.

UNT wrote that hourly employees “...do not receive any compensation for time not actually worked; only the hours the hourly employee physically worked should be entered.”

The school had already budgeted the cost of the wage-labor needed to pay hourly employees and clearly intended to pay it when they scheduled the workers.

UNT’s actions hurt hourly employees who — like most Texans — have endured rolling power outages and daylong blackouts. This has plunged Texas into a state of dire emergency where many are facing freezing temperatures, notices to boil water and pipes bursting inside walls.

At least 36 Texans have died due to severe weather according to The Hill. Any one of the fatalities could have been someone who worked at UNT.

It is imperative to workers that UNT does not add to this already immense collective stress. Doing otherwise takes a week of money out of the pockets of hourly employees and puts them behind on rent, groceries and bills.

Also, UNT’s choice is especially threatening to student-workers who make an average annual wage, placing student-workers below the United States Census Bureau’s poverty threshold. This is due to UNT Policy 05.025 which restricts student-workers to a total of 25 hours a week.

UNT is taking away from the already limited income that student-workers anticipated. Monthly budgets and needs have already been set in motion. Right now, UNT is passing its own financial burden onto hourly employees who among many are now forced by their institution of higher education to choose between what bills they can even afford this month.

Tell UNT that it must do what is economically just and compensate hourly employees for the scheduled hours of the workers.