Dabo Swinney & others take paycut as Clemson furloughs employees

Dabo Swinney & others take paycut as Clemson furloughs employees

Clemson University announced Monday afternoon that it will institute a mandatory furlough program in coordination with the South Carolina Department of Human Resources to help mitigate some of the costs lost due to the ongoing pandemic.

Any employee who makes more than $50,000 per year will be required to take furlough days without pay and how many would be determined by salary range.

While Dabo Swinney and Clemson’s coaches are contract workers, they have agreed to voluntarily take at least a 10 percent reduction in compensation, according to The Athletic’s Grace Raynor.

In addition to Dabo Swinney, Raynor reported that Clemson University President Jim Clements would be voluntarily taking a 10-percent paycut.

Dabo Swinney, others doing what they can to help the University

This is obviously a sad update to hear from Clemson and obviously not what any of us would want to see.

In a letter to addressed to faculty and staff, President Clements estimated that the university will lose somewhere in the realm of as much as $180 million and this program is a way to help offset some of that cost.

He explained that Clemson isn’t in a position to increase tuition and that he felt as if this furlough program was the best outcome.

"“To compound our challenges, we were simply not in a position to increase tuition at a time when many of our students are suffering economic hardship. And while we are working in earnest with our congressional and state leaders, additional revenues coming to the University from state and federal sources are not yet known,” Clements said."

Clements goes on to explain in his letter that all members of the athletic department- including Dabo Swinney, Brad Brownell and others- who are under contract would voluntarily take a paycut equal to or more than what they would have lost in the furlough, as we said above.

Swinney and others are doing what they can to help the university out during this time and those employees across Clemson should be commended for working to help better their organization.