4/12/2012: Sent out yesterday at 10AM, sorry for the delay in posting, people don’t always forward me the administration’s confidential emails as quickly as they should. Emphasis added:
To: [email protected]
Subject: cas-heads: Urgent information request due today 4 p.m.Dear department heads,
We have been asked by the Graduate School to provide information as quoted below. Please provide me the information by replying to this e-mail (to preserve the subject line) and attaching an excel file with the information as described below. Important is the definition of supervising. Supervising in this context means “hiring and firing” or at least having the ability to affect “hiring and firing”. For example, a faculty member who taught a large lecture class during winter term with labs or discussion sections taught by GTFs, would have been the supervisor of these GTFs. In other cases, where GTFs teach independent sections or classes, the supervisor might have been the faculty member in charge of a particular sector in the department, or it might have been the departments head. For GRFs the supervisor might be the PI etc.
Unfortunately there is a very quick turnaround. We need the information by 4 p.m. today. Please work with employees in your department as necessary to collect this list, preferably with unclassified employees.
[signed, X.]
From the Graduate School:
“The Graduate School has been asked to provide the General Counsel’s office with a list of all faculty who supervised 1+ G*Fs this past winter term. We have been asked to prioritize this, providing the list as soon as possible. Ideally your list would be alphabetized by last name and in Excel … “
And yes, I have a public records request in to the state ERB for the union documents too.
Absolute insanity. I supervise this term, didn’t last term, will again this fall. What kind of joke is this?
Dog says
my department mostly made up a list to satisfy this request
what else are you gonna do with one days notice. For simplicity
all faculty were designated as supervisors with maybe 1 or 2
exceptions.
What’s a GRF? (Graduate Research Fellow – yes but I don’t think that’s
an official term; they are RAs (research assistants).
I teach a large class and have GTFs to help out with the labs. I am asked to grade the GTF for ‘supervised teaching’ credit and give an evaluation as part of the department’s first year review of the student. But I cannot hire nor fire this GTF. I assume this is an attempt to broaden the group of faculty that could not be part of the union, but it seems to be a pretty thin rationale to include “can affect hiring and firing”. Union members would have some input on their brethren’s job performance, which would affect hiring and firing, so it must be substantial to count. I am already out for being a PI, so it doesn’t affect me.
One thing I don’t get is that TTF faculty vote on tenure for their fellow TTF, and TTF and NTTF in my department vote on promotions for NTTF. So don’t we all substantially affect firing? And TTF vote on hiring as well for TTF lines, which carries at least some weight for the dept. head. So don’t we all affect hiring?
Assuming this is related to the unionization effort, here is the definition of supervisory employee as written in Oregon’s public employee union statute (ORS 243.650) (apologies for repetition from another thread):
“Supervisory employee means any individual having authority in the interest of the employer to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action, if in connection therewith, the exercise of the authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature but requires the use of independent judgment.”
I would expect there are additional precedents etc. to help clarify this definition, but maybe not with respect specifically to university faculty (if the PSU union was never challenged then the ERB and/or courts may never have tried to clarify this for faculty). I’m not sure why UO would be focusing only on the hiring and firing part and not the other stuff. But it seems not unreasonable to say that with respect to GTF teaching assistants, a faculty member teaching a class has the power to “effectively… recommend” hiring and firing, as well as directing them in their work, based on that faculty member’s independent judgment as a professional educator.
I hope my chair was savvy enough to use this as an opportunity to get us removed from the list. Fingers crossed!
Given the very limited time, a dept head would hardly have the oppotunity to reflect on practice and understand the implications of his / her response.
What trouble me rather is that the focus seems to be heavily on supervision as a criterion for exclusion from the union.
And raises the question: is anyone going to make the case that it is not in the interests of the TTF to be in a union?
so opines the Golden Duck…
Does voting against tenure for a junior colleague consist of the power to “effectively… recommend” firing?
Good one.
Many of us TTF’s have tried to persuade the last two presidents to fire Jim Bean. If we can convince the next president will we be off the union list?
Nice try, but you weren’t effective. Russ and Jim gave everyone tenure, regardless of department recommendations.
I’m not sure what the original purpose of the memo was, but again, what *you* think a supervisory employee is, even if the ORS seems crystal clear, has little to do with whether you actually are a supervisory employee under union law. Go figure.
Many classified employees (union members all) are supervisors of employees (student employees, and sometimes other classified employees, in the case of lead workers), with many, most, or all of the powers described in the ORS cited above, yet they are allowed to be in the union. QED.
Don’t hang your hat on supervising GRFs or GTFs as exempting you from union membership. We know what happens to Hats around here….
It’s not uncommon for classified employees to be on hiring committees to find a replacement for their supervisor – “affecting hiring and firing” isn’t so broad that affecting the hiring of your supervisor creates an infinite loop of supervision that ends the universe. (or causes those classified employees to magically become OAs)
G?Fs are primarily students, who are secondarily employed. Their ID cards say Student.
RAs are professional employees with at least a bachelors degree, their ID cards say Faculty.
So here’s a question: who DOES supervise instructional GTFs in their capacity as employees? From the bargaining unit definition, one might conclude that it is either OAs or nobody at all.
I don’t know how the courts/ERB would answer the question. But to judge by our department, the one thing I’m sure of is that it’s absolutely not OAs. It must be ultimately the dept head, perhaps delegated through the DGS, though direct supervision, of course, is the work of faculty–but that could be TTF or NTTF, whoever is teaching the course to which they are assigned. If a GTF is the instructor of record, i.e., teaching independently, it must be the Dept Head.
Anyone know if Randy uses a Mac or a PC? Just trying to make my suggestions to him as explicit as possible.