UCLA laid off 27 employees in its digital and technology services department and eliminated their positions around late June.

Digital and Technology Solutions eliminated several open positions and adjusted organizational structures to align with the university’s priorities and finances, said Lucy Avetisyan – the associate vice chancellor and chief information officer – in an emailed statement. Avetisyan oversees UCLA’s information technology strategy.

“DTS remains committed to transparency about these changes and there are no additional workforce reductions planned at this time,” she said in the statement. “We recognize the impact these changes may have on some of our colleagues and teams and remain grateful for their contributions to UCLA.”

UCLA announced it would centralize IT services and pause faculty hiring in an Aug. 20 email sent by two vice chancellors to faculty and staff.

The consolidation initiative – called “One IT” – falls under the university’s plan to consolidate other units – including finance, communications, human resources, event planning and academic personnel services – to reduce costs, according to documents obtained by the Daily Bruin.

[Related: UCLA plans to consolidate some campus services to cut costs, increase ‘efficiency’]

UCLA was projected to run a $220 million deficit for the 2025-26 fiscal year, announced Interim Chief Financial Officer Reem Hanna-Harwell in a March campuswide email. Hanna-Harwell’s estimate came after Stephen Agostini, the university’s former CFO, alleged that past and current administrators’ financial mismanagement contributed to a $425 million deficit.

Chancellor Julio Frenk announced in a Feb. 17 campuswide email that Agostini was out as UCLA’s CFO four days after the Daily Bruin published an article about his allegations.

[Related: Interim CFO says UCLA’s budget deficit is markedly lower than previous estimates]

Nine of the laid-off employees were members of University Professional and Technical Employees-Communications Workers of America 9119, which represents about 26,000 UC healthcare, technical and research employees, said Ansel Herz, the union’s communication director.

More than 2,000 IT employees voted to unionize with UPTE-CWA 9119 in May, forming the largest union of its kind in the country.

[Related: IT employees across UC vote to join UPTE-CWA 9119 union]

Max Belasco, co-chair of UPTE-CWA 9119 at UCLA, said in an emailed statement that he believes UCLA violated the union’s contract by laying off the employees. UPTE-CWA 9119 still plans to protect the rights of its members, he added.

The union’s contract with the UC guarantees an alternative process before layoffs occur, including offering open positions to qualified employees, according to UPTE-CWA 9119’s website.

“We call on UCLA to quickly rescind these layoffs,” Belasco, a business systems analyst at the UCLA School of Law, said in the statement. “Thousands of IT employees recently joined our tech union because our contract requires alternatives to layoffs, providing them the security to do their best work.”

A DTS employee, who was not laid off and granted anonymity because of fear of retaliation, said the sudden layoffs eroded their trust in UCLA administrators.

“What these layoffs now have done is they’re destabilizing the morale of the entire institution,” the employee said. “They try to make a change and make things better for us, and then they go and they lay off a ton of people, so it’s a really hard time to be in IT at UCLA.”

Avetisyan informed staff about the layoffs in a last-minute virtual town hall meeting, the employee said. They added that Avetisyan told DTS staff that UCLA looked for several alternatives to layoffs but decided they were necessary to cut costs.

“The reality is that DTS is going to do what DTS is going to do, and that’s what we’ve seen,” the employee said.

The employee said they are concerned by DTS’s lack of communication about the layoffs.

“I really love getting to work for UCLA, and getting to do what I get to do with the people that I do it with is so important to me,” the employee said. “It really makes me sad that this sort of thing is happening.”

Contributing reports by Alexis Muchnik, national news and higher education editor