Layoffs At UMass Med School

UMass Medical School announced yesterday that it would layoff 63 workers due to state and federal financial cutbacks, The Worcester Telegram & Gazette reports.

The job cuts, which a spokesman characterized as a proactive “streamlining” that mostly eliminated administrative positions, also included maintenance workers, security guards and fundraisers from the school’s development office.

“Really what we’re looking at is, as the federal budget process plays out, there’s potentially less money from the National Institutes of Health and potentially less money from the state,” medical school spokesman Edward Keohane said.

The layoffs come less than two months after the medical school chancellor, Dr. Michael F. Collins, got a more than $60,000 a year raise that hiked his annual base salary and deferred compensation by nearly 12 percent from $524,300 to $585,290 a year.