Contractual Rights Training 2014--Scenario #2

The following are typical fact situations that may be presented to grievance stewards by unit members.  For each, we will discuss the following in small groups, then as a whole:

1.  Is this a gripe or a grievance?

2.  If it’s a grievance, which articles and subsections does it violate?

3.  If it’s a grievance, what kind of evidence do you need?  How are you going to get it: RFI, data base research, other?

4.  To the extent time allows, fill out a grievance form.

Scenario #2.  Joe has taught in the Ethnic Studies department for six or seven years, off and on (not always all three quarters every year, course load varying at 33% FTE or 67% FTE).  He thinks his current quarter count is 15 quarters as of spring 2014, but his tax records only go back 3 years and his wife tossed everything else.  His department MSO (management service officer) told him that the courses he has been teaching are getting phased out and his services will no longer be needed in 2014-15.   He thinks that this is unlikely (he teaches Intro to African American History, crosslisted with the History department, and Race, Gender, and Class, crosslisted with the Sociology department).  Somebody else told him that the department has a policy against employing lecturers for more than six years.  His department chair says that if they employ a lecturer at over 50% FTE for two years, they have to do a national search, because that’s the Dean’s policy.   The university course website shows only the courses for fall 2014, and neither of the courses he customarily teaches are being offered this fall.  However, there is a new course being offered called Black Like Me: Topics in Cross-Racial Passing.  The instructor listed for this course is named Staff.  Joe feels that he is qualified to teach this course and asked the department chair to consider him for it, but the chair said that the class will be taught by the new spouse of a full professor, who is relocating here this summer.   He talked to the MSO again, asking why his customary courses are being phased out, and she said the funding for those particular courses is gone because the donor died.

Joe remembers getting a departmental newsletter in an email several years ago that said lecturer positions are primarily for new PhDs to help them while they’re on the job market, and that lecturers are not expected to remain in these positions past three years.   He did not save the email.  He also heard another professor in the mailroom saying something about somebody getting a little long in the tooth, and suspects that the professor was talking about him.