FAU Interim Provost Diane Alperin issued a response dated December 11 to UFF-FAU President James Tracy’s December 7 letter putting the administration on notice that UFF intends to file an Unfair Labor Practice charge against the administration if administrators continue their foot-dragging on the Chapter Grievance concerning the May 29 layoffs of Engineering faculty. Alperin’s response, which may be viewed here, is exemplary of the administration’s refusal to deal forthrightly and within the parameters of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (specifically Article 20.3) to which faculty and the administration are bound.
Alperin, Interim President John Pritchett, and College of Engineering Dean Karl Stevens apparently believe that they can create bogus units in order to get around the CBA, lay off faculty, and then tell UFF to go away because the terminated faculty have been re-employed with seniority and no loss of benefits. What is important to keep in mind, however, is that these faculty members have not been reinstated to their original positions. Thus, the administration has not rescinded the layoffs. Nor has it retreated on the process initiated to lay off faculty–a phony “reogranization” of a College that was used to target professors it chose to remove from their positions. This process can and likely will be used again to lay off faculty over the next few years and therefore it must be challenged through arbitration.
Much like Frank Brogan’s claims last June that he was a proponent of faculty tenure while at the same time presiding over the termination of tenured faculty, the administration apparently wants to have its cake and eat it too. In other words, after realizing that the layoffs were generating considerable negative publicity, and would have likely resulted in several successful lawsuits and UFF grievances, in addition to probable EEOC investigations and charges for gender, age and/or race-based discrimination, administrators offered tenured positions–“hush positions”–to some of the faculty in exchange for them dropping their grievances and lawsuits.
In fact, back in August Pritchett and Alperin met with some of the laid off professors and asked them to sign away their claims without the employees’ legal counsels or the UFF Grievance Chair present–meetings which absent the grievant’s right to counsel were clear violations of the CBA (20.5: Representation) and Florida Statute 447: Labor Organizations. Apparently, either this is how things are done “down South,” or the administration simply makes it up as it goes along. Perhaps it’s a bit of both. Faculty should be treated more or less as children; tell them it’s simply not true and they will go away contented. Regardless of how tightly the administration squeezes its eyes shut, plugs its ears, and repeatedly shouts “La-la-la-la!” the UFF Chapter Grievance concerning the Engineering layoffs does not go away until the layoffs are rescinded–period.
There is barely any limit on the patronizing regard the administration exhibits toward the faculty. Elsewhere in Alperin’s December 11 correspondence she asserts that “the Article 13 [Layoffs] language that is the subject of the grievance has expired and is in the process of being renegotiated. Any issues the chapter may have regarding the language of interpretation of Article 13 should be addressed at the bargaining table.” This is another real howler. In other words, the UFF and faculty are asked to accept that although the law (CBA) doesn’t exactly conform with what the administration has done and refuses to acknowledge, we needn’t worry. They will have their Philadelphia lawyer “fix it” at the bargaining table so that it does. This is along the lines of Dean Stevens’ proposal last September to rewrite the College of Engineering Faculty Assembly bylaws so that they might be applied retroactively to his abrupt reorganization of the College. Reality check: the 2006-09 CBA is the framework we all live with until the new one is signed off on by both the UFF and the BOT’s representatives.
FAU administrators should be more honest and forthright with the faculty and their legal representative, UFF, but they instead choose to spurn genuine shared governance, and then feign aloofness or deny any wrongdoing when they should be making amends and building up the bridges with faculty that Frank Brogan helped to destroy. At October’s College of Arts and Letters Faculty Assembly UFF-FAU President James Tracy asked Pritchett when the Engineering layoffs would be rescinded. “They have been rescinded,” he responded, barely concealing his exasperation at such insolence, “with my letter [to laid off faculty].” He then quickly exited the venue. Yet the layoffs remain, and with them so does the administration’s heretofore unchallenged capacity to carry out layoffs of tenured faculty with impunity. Pritchett’s “My way or the highway” approach might work in the corporate sector, which by its very nature is hierarchical and feudalistic, but members of an institution of higher learning should expect carefully thought out ideas and actions from their management–not summary executions of faculty careers and livelihoods. Moreover, the faculty’s legal representative should not have to resort to filing an Unfair Labor Practice charge to force its counterpart to abide by the CBA to which it is a signatory and acknowledge the reality that exists apart from its own land of make believe.
See related posts:
FAU Administration Slow to Act on Arbitration Preliminaries
FAU Administration Stalls, Throws Up Roadblocks on Grievances