• On October 2 Provost Alperin responded to the email below, stating that she had been on leave since Sept. 11, just returning on Sept. 28.  Alperin has asked that UFF-FAU contact the Provost Office’s staff to schedule an appointment for selection of an arbitrator on Grievance 2009-12 (Chapter Grievance on Engineering layoffs) to proceed.

The email below sans responses was sent to Provost Alperin on September 28 and October 1.

RE: grievance 2009-14 and others

Friday, October 2, 2009 2:07 PM
From:
To: “Doug Broadfield”
Cc: “James Tracy” , “Bruce Nissen”

Doug,

As you know, I was on leave from 9/8/09 through 9/28/09. Please see my responses to each of your items below.

Diane

Diane Elias Alperin, Associate Provost
Academic Personnel and Programs
and Professor of Social Work
Florida Atlantic University
777 Glades Road
Boca Raton, Florida 33431

tel: 561.297.3068
fax: 561.297.3942
email:

—–Original Message—–
From: Doug Broadfield
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 9:44 AM
To: Diane Alperin
Cc: James Tracy; Bruce Nissen
Subject: grievance 2009-14 and others

Diane,
I wanted to see if we can move forward in setting up meetings on
various grievance related issues.

1) Almost a month ago we agreed to select an arbitrator for grievance
2009-14 to determine its arbitrability. To date, no meeting has been
set to do this.

Okay — let’s go ahead and meet to select an arbitrator. Call Erma to schedule.

2) An arbitrator for grievance 2009-12 should have been selected a
month and a half ago. While we appreciate the University’s efforts to
find all of the laid off employees alternative employment, these
efforts should not delay any of the current grievances.

As you recall, we earlier had agreed on a consolidation of four grievances, but three of these grievances have now been withdrawn. We will wait a little longer to select an arbitrator here to avoid paying cancellation fees in the event this grievance is also withdrawn. As you know we’ve been looking for alternate employment for all laid off faculty, and have been successful so far. If the UFF aggress to pay any cancellation fees, we will meet now to select an arbitrator for 2009-12.

3) An appendix C grievance was filed at Step 2 on August 25, 2009 by
UFF regarding failure to process and ADR. We are now 3 weeks removed
from that date.

If you are referring to Grievance 2009-18, this relates to a previous grievance (2009-16) to which I believe I have already responded. You have filed four different grievances on behalf of this one grievant, all in regard to the assignment for the 2009-2010 academic year, the first of which is proceeding to Arbitration on October 20, 2009.

4) The ADR submitted on August 25, 2009 also needs to move forward,
but setting the date may be postponed until the grievant’s return next
week.

If you are referring to Grievance 2009-4, my file indicates that I sent you a memo on 8/26/09 acknowledging receipt of the grievance and asking you to call Erma Bennett at 7-3068 to set up a mutually agreeable time for a Part 2 meeting.

Understandably the end of the summer semester and the beginning of the
academic year create issues that can make scheduling meetings
difficult, but there is no reason we should not be able to put these
meetings in our schedules to ensure that timelines stated within the
contract are being appropriately followed.

Please contact me as soon as possible to schedule these meetings so
that we do not further delay the outstanding grievances.

Thank you for for quick attention to these matters.

Doug