LaGuardia Community College’s administration fought the contract. And the contract won.
The union filed a grievance in response to the college’s decision to unilaterally add “leadership” as a requirement for professorial promotion, a clear violation of the CUNY Board of Trustees’ (BOT) policy as well as the collective bargaining agreement (CBA).
Evelyn Burg’s handling of this grievance was central to the PSC’s win in this case. (Credit: Paul Frangipane)
VIOLATIONS
Natalie Grieco, the PSC’s legal coordinator, explained in the union’s April 9 brief to the arbitrator that while the application of the Board of Trustees’ criteria for reappointment, promotion and tenure (RPT) is subject to the academic judgment of the college,” the college may not add or subject “criteria to those issued by the BOT.” And in this case, LaGuardia “issued a new set of RPT criteria that purported to add the new criterion of ‘leadership’ to the BOT policy and the CBA,” which “is a violation of the CBA and the BOT policy.”
This decision was years in the making. In 2019, the union asserted, the LaGuardia administration added “leadership” as part of the criteria needed for promotion to associate or full professor.
“Even if the addition of ‘leadership’ to the RPT criterion could be added solely by the college, and it cannot be, LAGCC did not follow its own Governance Plan in imposing the new standard on the faculty,” Grieco said. At the hearing, the college admitted that the revisions to the Instructional Staff Handbook were made by the LaGuardia Personnel and Budget (P&B) Committee. This is an improper body for the creation of academic policy, which is what the revisions amount to in practice.
BAD DECISIONS
A professor of English at LaGuardia and union grievance counselor, Evelyn Burg “represented faculty who were turned down for promotions prior to 2019 because of deficiencies in leadership” and she “testified that in many cases, leadership was the major factor in the negative decisions,” according to the arbitrator’s decision.
Grieco further argued that the application of this new requirement was “arbitrary and ambiguous,” insisting that the “arbitrator uphold the grievance and remove the college’s imposition of ‘leadership’ from the criteria for reappointment, tenure and promotion in the LAGCC Instructional Staff Handbook.”
Burg, who argued the case at steps one and two of the grievance process, said that the problem this created was that academics who focused on their scholarship could be rejected for promotion because they didn’t fit ill-defined and narrow “leadership” requirements set forth by the administration. “You had to be the chair of a major committee, you had to originate something, you had to start something. It was service on super steroids,” she said. “And if you didn’t do that, if you focused on scholarship, you wouldn’t get promoted.”
She added, “This was really a blank check to the administration to increase the workload in an indefinite and unspecified way that was really doing their bidding.”
UNION WINS
Arbitrator Ruth Moscovitch sided with the union.
“In its post-hearing brief, CUNY argues that the word ‘summary’ that had appeared in the 2014 and 2016 handbooks ‘was meant to indicate that there should be a summary of all activities showing leadership,’” she said. “Based upon all of this testimony, I must reject CUNY’s assertion that the term ‘summary’ that appeared in the 2014 and 2016 handbooks actually meant ‘summary of leadership activities.’” She added, “Now, as a ‘requirement,’ one of the seven criteria, there will need to be a different and more pointed focus on whatever ‘leadership’ in general means. In sum, I find that the rewriting of the handbook in 2019 to substitute the term ‘leadership’ for the term ‘summary’ was not simply a rearrangement of terms already present in the handbook; it was a material change.”
CUNY FUMBLES
But she was not done picking apart the heart of the college administration’s weak case, noting that “if CUNY sought by this change to clarify terms that were ambiguous, it failed to achieve that goal.” Moscovitch added, “The issue before me is not whether CUNY did a good job in clarifying matters when it rewrote the handbook, but whether it violated the collective bargaining agreement, or established CUNY policies. I find that it did.”
The language about “leadership” was ordered to be removed from the college’s requirements.
For Burg, this was a major victory not just for faculty at LaGuardia but for all CUNY faculty who care about the integrity of the profession, because she believed the “leadership” requirement “was changing terms of employment at the whim of the administration,” which was “against the tradition” of the University.
“It made me incredibly happy,” Burg said of the arbitrator’s decision. “I’m no Clarence Darrow, but it was very gratifying.”
Published: August 5, 2024
