09/24/20 ASSC workshop“Welcome Back During COVID-19”

Please join the Academic Staff Steering Committee (ASSC) on Thursday, September 24, 2020, from Noon- 1:30 p.m., for the “Welcome Back During COVID-19” virtual Zoom workshop to discuss the challenges faced by Academic Staff while working from home, and tips on finding professional development opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Click here to register on Academica  

08/10/20 University Budget Update: Response to President Wilson

 

07/14/20 Coalition of Unions Demands for Appropriate Policies During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Dear Wayne State University Board of Governors and President Wilson,

Please find attached [i.e. below] a letter written and co-signed by 12 Unions and students, including the Student Senate, regarding campus public health during Covid-19.

Faculty, academic staff and students join with building trades and grounds workers, engineers, dining workers, custodians, clerical staff and police officers to make the following requests during the Covid-19 pandemic: guaranteed paid leave, dropping disciplinary charges for absences related to Covid-19, continuing flexible work arrangements, training for supervisors in administering leave during Covid-19, and free rapid testing on campus.

Additionally, we respectfully invite members of the Board of Governors and the Administration to meet with the Coalition of Unions regarding our concerns related to Covid-19.

Sincerely,Tom Anderson, ChairCoalition of Unions at WSU

**********************************************************************

Wayne State University Leave Time During the Covid-19 Pandemic

DEMANDS FOR APPROPRIATE POLICIES DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

BY THE COALITION OF UNIONS & STUDENTS at WSU

July 14, 2020

Building trades and grounds workers, engineers, dining workers, custodians, clerical staff and police officers are among the Wayne State workers who have returned to work—or who have remained on campus—since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

For everyone’s safety, it is critical that anyone who could possibly carry the deadly coronavirus not feel compelled to come to campus. The Wayne State University guidelines rightly instruct employees that, “If you have symptoms or have been exposed, stay home.”

It is, therefore, imperative to employee and public safety that the Wayne State University Administration provide appropriate leave policies, clearly articulated to all levels of management, that encourage, not discourage, possible carriers of the disease from coming to campus, particularly if they exhibit Covid-19 symptoms or have been exposed to someone who exhibits Covid-19 symptoms. Policies that do not provide adequate paid leave time put employees in an impossible position of choosing between risking their livelihoods or risking public safety.

United in our concern for the Wayne State University community, the Coalition of Unions at WSU requests the following policies be implemented immediately across WSU:

1. PAID LEAVE

All workers, both on and off campus, should receive “no questions asked” paid leave if they have been exposed to Covid-19, exhibit symptoms of Covid-19, or are caring for a family member with Covid-19 symptoms. This goes into effect retroactively to cover workers who have already given up vacation and/or accrued days to cover Covid-19 related absences.

2. DROP DISCIPLINARY CHARGES

Disciplinary measures against employees who report Covid-19 related absences are suspended, and discipline for past Covid-19 related absences is removed.

3. FLEXIBLE WORK

Flexible work-from-home arrangements should continue to be provided. Administration must show sufficient justification that an employee's presence on campus is essential before requiring them to return in person. Special consideration is given to those caring for children, as well as those caring for other family members.

4. TRAIN SUPERVISORS

All supervisors receive up-to-date training on all relevant sick leave policies.

5. FREE RAPID TESTING ON CAMPUS

Provide free rapid testing to identify Covid-19 as quickly as possible when it arrives on campus. Rapid tests would allow employees to either return to work or quarantine immediately, rather than waiting up to two weeks for results.

6. INVITATION TO MEET

Members of the Administration and the Board of Governors are invited to meet with the Coalition of Unions to hear recommendations from those who have been working and maintaining buildings on campus during the pandemic.

Elaboration on the above points:

1. PAID LEAVE

Although the Administration has implemented a number of Covid-19 related enhancements augmenting established and contractual sick leave policies, they do not cover all situations and all people sufficiently. The WSU Shared Sick/Illness Time Pool provides a maximum of 14 days of paid leave and is dependent on others donating their time. Employees in skilled trades are ineligible, since they do not have agreements that provide accrued sick time, which is one of the requirements. The federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) provides only two (2) weeks of Emergency Paid Leave. There is a provision for another 10 weeks through an expansion of FMLA, but this is limited to caring for a child under the age of 18. It does not include caring for a spouse, parent, and other family members. The federal benefits in FFCRA end in December 2020.

A guaranteed University-wide Covid-19 paid leave policy could be accomplished through expanding coverage and supplementing the WSU Shared Sick/Illness Time Pool with sufficient funding to cover all employees absent from work for Covid-19 related reasons.

2. DROP DISCIPLINARY CHARGES

Employees who report Covid-19-related absences should be believed, not threatened. Employment policies that discipline and terminate employees who accumulate more than a limited number of absences—even when caused by Covid-19 related situations—put the entire WSU community at risk. There should be no disincentive to staying home when sick with or when exposed to Covid-19.

3. FLEXIBLE WORK

With increased caretaking demands due to closures of child care centers, school buildings, and care services for family members because of the pandemic, many employees have relied on WSU’s Flexible Work Arrangement if eligible and, where available, paid family leave policies to maintain their employment. A number of employees required to come to campus struggle with managing caregiving during this time. Retaining these experienced and valuable employees is essential to the University’s continued success.

4. TRAIN SUPERVISORS

We have found that a number of frontline administrators are unaware of or not properly administering available options for paid leave. This creates both unnecessary stress for employees and risk to the Wayne State community. Some workers have been told to use vacation days when caring for others with Covid-19. Others with mild symptoms who were waiting on Covid-19 test results lost time from their regular sick day bank when this should have been covered by Federal Paid Emergency Leave. As more and more Wayne State employees return to work, this problem will intensify.

5. FREE RAPID TESTING ON CAMPUS

It is critical for workers returning to campus to have access to free Covid-19 testing. We support the efforts by the Public Health Subcommittee of the WSU Restart Committee to provide periodic testing and contact tracing for individuals residing on campus. We request that the same periodic testing and contact tracing be extended to all campus workers. When a case of Covid-19 is identified, we demand that a properly protected and equipped custodial crew sanitize all spaces.

6. INVITATION TO MEET

The Coalition of Unions has formed a Health and Safety Working Group because we know that not all campus workers are represented on the university restart committees. The restart committees are, for the most part, led by administrators. We extend an open invitation to members of the administration and the Board of Governors to meet with the Coalition of Unions to hear directly from Wayne State workers from across campus.

Respectfully submitted by the Coalition of Unions and students at Wayne State:

AFSCME Local 1497, Custodial Staff

AAUP-AFT Local 6075, Faculty & Academic Staff

Graduate Employees Organizing Committee, GEOC AFT Local 6123

IBEW Local 58

IUOE Local 325, Operating Engineers

Teamsters Local 337, Dining Staff

UniteHere! Local 24, Custodial Staff

UAW Local 1979 Professional & Administrative Staff (P&A)

UAW Local 2071 Staff Association

UPTF AFT Local 477, Part-Time Faculty

WSU Police Officers Association

WSU Skilled Trades

WSU Student Senate

WSU Young Democratic Socialists of America

Membership Q&A, Friday 07/17/20, 3-4:30 pm

The union is preparing a session to provide updates, and to take questions you may have related to campus Restart activities, Impact Bargaining, or other concerns.

See you on Friday, July 17th, 3-4:30 pm, for a Union Q&A Session.

RSVP and Question form here - for Zoom meeting info check your e-mail or contact the union's office at 313-577-1750, office@aaupaft.org

07/08/20 Relations with the WSU Administration in the Context of Covid-19

This is to keep you informed of the progress of the efforts to meet the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis by the University. The Union leadership is still at the beginnings of a conversation with the Administration over the financial response to the crisis. It is as yet unknown how many students will register and pay the tuition that provides almost two-thirds of the University’s general fund during the current fiscal year. We will keep you informed as the discussions progress.

I want to commend the Administration for initiating the formation of the Restart Committee and its various subcommittees to address the University’s response to the various dimensions of the crisis we collectively face in our institution. The work of the Committee and its subcommittees has been for the most part sensible and helpful to meeting the challenges faced by the University in these difficult times. However, the process of forming the committees raised some important issues.

Representation on Restart Committees. Unfortunately, it was a struggle to get representation of the Faculty and Academic Staff in the membership of the Restart Committee and its subcommittees. The chief manner in which we have a voice in the operation of the University is through the organizations in which we elect our own leaders: our Academic Senate and our Union. In short, our instruments of academic governance and of our representatives who negotiate our terms and conditions of employment. The divergence between the interests of administrators, who have increasingly come to dominate colleges and universities and those of the people who actually deliver the services that justify their existence has become increasingly obvious. A recent book by Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters (Oxford University Press, 2011) is but one useful example of many examinations of this phenomenon. It is ironic that intellectuals wage their wars with the ever-burgeoning assemblages of higher education administrators by writing down their ideas. They often assume that their arguments, if made forcefully enough, will win the day. Their opponents, the administrators, for the most part, wage these wars of ideas by ignoring them and working every day to accumulate power memorandum by memorandum.

President Wilson Insists on His Right to Choose Senate Representatives. The COVID-19 crisis provided the grounds for yet another skirmish between these forces at WSU. The first impulse of President Wilson was to appoint members of these Restart Committees without consulting either the Senate or the Union. He maintained to the Senate President that he could appoint representatives of the Senate instead of them being appointed by the Senate itself. In the initial appointments of administrators to the Committees, those who held retreat positions on the Faculty were identified by an asterisk as Faculty representatives when memberships on these groups were initially published on the University’s website. For example, the Dean of CLAS, as with other such administrators, were identified as Faculty members.

Following protests by the Academic Senate, President Wilson added representatives chosen by the Senate and the Union with one significant exception. The President of the Senate was designated by the Senate Policy Committee for membership in the Finance Restart Subcommittee. President Wilson refused to appoint her to it. The struggle to get President Wilson to recognize the right of the Senate to appoint its own representatives to University committees continues.

For example, the President is in the process of establishing a “Social Justice Action Committee.” In a memorandum to the Senate President he stated: “Faculty representation will be important and I am requesting that you and the Policy Committee of the Academic Senate provide me with fifteen names of potential faculty from which I can select five to be on the various subcommittees.” It is clear that he is committed to the patronizing principle that the Senate cannot be trusted to designate its own representatives. On the five committees that make up the Social Justice Action Committee (no central committee was named), roughly half of those named as members are administrators, there were five unnamed Academic Senate slots on four committees and four student slots on one committee. The AAUP-AFT was not asked for names for appointment to any of the committees.

The charge to the committees from President Wilson is: “(1) examining internal policies, procedures, and practices to identify and eliminate bias throughout the Wayne State University campus that may disproportionately disadvantage historically marginalized peoples, and (2) recommend specific actions for consideration of immediate, short term, medium term, and long term implementation to advance social justice and equity for historically marginalized peoples at Wayne State University.”

Social Justice and Race at WSU. In establishing the Social Justice Committee, the President does not ask that it focus on the University’s obligation to the city of Detroit within which it lives. I would hope that the Committee would examine the issue of what we could do to raise the number of our Black graduates. President Wilson and his senior administrators have been celebrating the increased percentage of Black students graduating from the University. I have suggested that the effusive self-congratulations should be tempered by the fact that during his Administration, the number of Black students at the University has declined dramatically, and there are no policies in place to address this issue. When President Wilson came to Wayne State in 2013, we graduated 527 Black students. This year, we graduated 473 Black students, 10 percent fewer. My communication, slightly revised, to the Board of Governors that deals with this issue is attached. Also attached is a copy of Governor Sandra Hughes O’Brien comments published in Deadline Detroit on this same subject. The pertinent question is what should be the social justice action responsibilities to the community of a university situated in the heart of a city with a population that is 80 percent Black, with half of its children below the poverty level. Why is Wayne State’s Administration committed to a program that touts a higher graduation percentage based on a falling number of Black graduates and a dwindling number of Black students?

Conclusion. It would be much better for the University if President Wilson was a leader who welcomed criticism and was not resistant to the kind of vigorous debate that would be involved in a strong system of shared governance that is envisioned in the Annotated Code of the Board of Governors that states: “… [the] Senate has authority and responsibility for the formulation and review of educational policy affecting the University as a whole.” (2.26.04) Important questions, such as that of social justice and race, should be topics for robust debate within the Senate and between an independent Senate and President Wilson and his administrators. That would be good for the University.

Sincerely,

Charlie
--

Charles J. Parrish
President, AAUP-AFT, Local 6075, WSU Chapter
Vice President-at-Large, AFT Michigan
President, AAUP Michigan Conference
Member-at-Large, National Council, AAUP
5057 Woodward Avenue, Suite 3301
Detroit, MI 48202
313.577.1750