What Has The Union Done for You Lately?
Settled Early-Informal Grievance/Complaint Language Arts Department

By Debbie DeLaRosa, FA AFT 6157, Grievance Officer

Once again, your FA, AFT 6157 assisted faculty in the form of an informal grievance to insure that faculty rights were protected. On January 13, 2009, Interim Dean of Language Arts Linda Girard at EVC sent an email to the faculty informing them of a change in the process used to choose classes. This issue was discussed at PDD on January 23, 2009. The faculty at this meeting voiced their opposition to this unilateral decision by the dean. Both the ESL and English departments promptly sent emails to Dean Girard requesting that faculty designed procedures already in place be honored.

Since the emails to Dean Girard and the discussion at the Division meeting did not produce any positive results to return to the faculty’s historical and past practice of choosing classes, February 27, 2009, AFT 6157 Grievance Officer Debbie De La Rosa and Language Arts faculty members William Silver and Rachel Cohen met for an informal grievance/complaint meeting with Dean Girard under Article 3.1.2. We discussed not only the violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement in the use of preference sheets for assigning classes, but also Article 12.4 and the right of full time faculty to be paid for evaluating adjunct outside their regular work day (19.4.4).

Below is a summary of the agreements that were reached:

1. The faculty stated their concerns over the new procedure of preference sheets unilaterally put into place by Dean Girard and their desire to continue the existing faculty designed procedure for determining class assignments. After some important discussion, Dean Linda Girard agreed that the preference sheet procedure would not be used or added to the existing faculty designed procedure. She agreed that the Language Arts division would return to the existing procedure.

2. We also conferred about the assignment of full time faculty to observe adjunct outside of their six-hour period and be paid for two hours.

We discussed the email sent by Dean Girard in which she suggested that due to limited resources faculty should not sign up for observing faculty outside their work period as there was no finances to pay them. Dean Girard agreed that any full time faculty working outside of their six-hour work period shall be paid for two hours at the hourly laboratory rate for the observation of adjunct and for completing the evaluation form for our adjunct faculty.

The Union was pleased that we were able to resolve these potential formal grievances at the informal level and hoped to move forward with a continued positive communications and working relationship with Dean Linda Girard.