Fall 2017
In
this Issue:
The Proposed
2017-19 Contract
Family
Health / Jr. Faculty Initiatives
Adjunct
Health Reminder
Overtime
and Forced Overload
Recognition
Pay
Sexual
Misconduct and Article 10
Intellectual
Property
Professor
of the Practice in Tobin
Join SJU-AAUP
SJU-AAUP Chapter
Meeting on Monday, Nov 13, common hour.
2017
Election Results
The
Proposed 2017-19 Contract
The most noticeable fact about the proposed contract is that it is short: 2 years.
The reason is the economic uncertainty created by Gov. Cuomo’s Excelsior
Program to provide free tuition to state colleges and universities for students
whose family income is less than $125,000. The effect on this year’s Fall 2017
incoming class has been a drop of about 100 students, or about a 1.7 million
dollar shortfall. (St. John’s budgets about $17,000 income for each student).
The administration is unsure what the effects on next year’s incoming class
might be. As a result, contract negotiations were stunted.
The new faculty contract would include 2.25% raises
for each year, and no cuts in current health/benefit packages---including the adjunct health assistance program. It also includes several quality-of-life improvements for fulltime faculty,
such as a tenure-clock delay for care of children or elderly family members. Jr.
tenure-track faculty were also given permission to petition the Provost for a
one-semester reduction in teaching after their 3rd year review (ie: the potential for a full-semester Jr. faculty research
leave). Increases for adjunct rank promotion were also increased to a minimum
of 2.25%, in addition to base salary raises. The Core faculty were included in
the "Alternative Responsibility" Appendix I, which allows them to
apply for a 3/3 teaching load.
Longstanding union initiatives for teaching parity
across the colleges and internship/mentoring remuneration, both of which have
significant economic impacts, remain unresolved but will be pursued in future
negotiations or in current Labor/Management Committee discussions.
Contract negotiations generated several significant changes
to faculty life, each of which are discussed in greater detail in this
newsletter:
Jr.
Faculty Tenure Clock Delay for Child & Eldercare
Jr.
Faculty Research Leave Application
Jr.
Faculty Affordable Housing Opportunities
Reduced
Workload Arrangement for Tenured Faculty
Improved
Intellectual Property Policy
Faculty
Sexual Misconduct and Article 10
__________________________________________________________________
Family
Health / Jr. Faculty Initiatives
At the behest of the Executive Council
of our chapter of the AAUP, the SJU-AAUP conducted a survey of family health
needs at St. John’s in the fall of 2016. The survey was designed by Barbara Koziak (Gov & Politics), Fred
Cocozzeli (Gov & Politcs), and G. Ganter (English). It had a significant
response rate---250 faculty, fairly evenly represented among colleges,
adjuncts, fulltimers, men, and women. (Survey
results are available via the
SJU-AAUP website). The survey results allowed AAUP to propose a number of
issues about family health during the contract negotiations with promising
outcomes.
The good news is that both the
administration and the unions seem to have discovered a language of mutual
interest that may lead to some long term improvements in faculty life. Of
particular interest are upcoming discussions in the Labor/Management Committee
about the possibility of reducing the financial contribution of post-2003
faculty who pay a portion of their health care premiums.
The outcome of our AAUP survey was
significant in several concrete ways, some of which are included in the
contract and Statues, some not. The first is a tenure-clock delay for Jr.
faculty for the birth or adoption of a child. This may be renewed up to two
times. Jr. faculty who provide eldercare may extend their tenure clock by one
year. (Statutes
9.02 e & f).
Tenured faculty who wish a reduced teaching
load at a reduced salary may apply to the Provost with the support of their
P&Bs. (Art.
9.24, p. 23). These arrangements
are envisioned as lasting only one year, but they may be renewed. Although
these faculty forgo all health benefits, some faculty with alternative
financial resources may find this an agreeable option for a variety of reasons.
Another significant change to the
contract is the addition of a clause allowing Jr. faculty to apply for a
research leave (one course or more) after a successful 3rd year
review and with the support of their P&Bs. (Art.
13.01c, p.34).
Another important consequence of the AAUP
Family Health Survey, although not technically part of the contract, was the
inception of a Jr. faculty housing initiative with reduced rent. Young faculty
at St. John’s face starting a professional life in one of the most expensive
areas in the country. This anxiety has recently resulted in the loss of some
first choice candidates at St. John’s. In response to union requests, the
university reached out to local landlords to negotiate low cost faculty housing
in some vacant apartments near the campus. It has currently found two
apartments nearby St. John’s to be used for new faculty hiring. The
administration hopes this program will grow in years to come.
_______________________________________________________________
Adjunct Health Assistance Reminder
The
administration continues to provide annual health insurance assistance to
adjuncts who teach regularly at St. John's. Payments may be up to $1500 a
year. Faculty must apply by January 31st
each year. See Art. 15.13, p. 46. Here is a link to the
short application form, which must be
notarized. Contact Mirian Cepeda (cepedam@stjohns.edu) at Human Resources if you have questions---it
is an easy process to apply.
Here
are the qualifications, according to the Human Resources office:
(1) The adjunct must be a “continuing adjunct”
as defined in the contract—see “Appendix C”, p. 80)
(2) They must complete a certification no later
than January 31 of the year following the year they request the reimbursement.
So if they are applying for academic year 2017-18 they have until January 31,
2018 to apply. The payment would be made on the next pay, the February 15, 2018
pay
(3) Adjuncts who want to apply for 2017 can,
but we [the
payroll office] would not make the
payment until February 15, 2018. We are only required to make the payments once
a year, and that is the time period we have chosen as it is after the year that
reimbursement is being requested has ended.
Graduate Student Adjunct
Health Benefits
Graduate
students who teach are eligible for health care through the university at $1810
a year: http://www.stjohns.edu/admission-aid/tuition-and-financial-aid/tuition/health-insurance
________________________________________________________________
Overtime
and Forced Overload
Because of university austerity, the caps on faculty teaching overload remain
in place for this contract. Faculty whose department curriculum obliges
them to teach more than 9 credits, however, will be exempt from these caps. Such
exemptions will be rare, and limited mostly to Pharmacy and Business.
Most faculty are supposed to teach a
minimum of 9 credits per semester (or 12 credits in CPS and the Core). For
faculty who teach more than the minimum, the formula for overtime pay is 1/36
of the faculty members' salary per credit, but starting in the 2014-17
contract, that amount was "capped" at a maximum of $8550 for a three
credit class (Art. 9.12bii, p. 20). (Summer pay and
substitute teaching still get the full 1/36/credit pay.)
However, faculty in several colleges are
occasionally "forced" to teach overtime because of the credit
structure of their college’s curriculum. For example, in Pharmacy, faculty
might teach two 4-credit classes, resulting in 8 credits. Their minimal
obligation is to teach 9 credits, so if they take on another 3 credit class,
they are actually teaching 2 credits "overtime." If this situation is
a result of their college's curriculum, not faculty choice, this is a
"forced" overload scenario and the proposed contract exempts these
faculty from the overtime cap.
________________________________________________________________
Recognition
Pay
Our university's system for awarding Recognition pay
has undergone several transformations in the past several contracts (Art. 14.03, p.38). Faculty have rightfully complained
that the system is still quirky and unreliable---a particularly bad situation
for faculty who publish books or who otherwise earn national recognition for
their research.
The bad news is that because of tight university
finances, the amount of money available for Recognition pay has been frozen at the
2016-17 levels for the next two years of the proposed 2017-19 contract.
The good news is that the faculty/Dean award
committees in the colleges have been freed to make awards as they see fit to as
many of the faculty as they can---there is no longer a formal limit to make
awards to only 30% of the faculty. Also, for the first time, service will be
recognized, but not at the expense of research and teaching: awards are to be
made according to "research, teaching, and service in that order."
Although the money available to be distributed in
each college is likely less than in previous contracts, the award committees
will be able to address a wide variety of faculty contributions to the school.
________________________________________________________________
Faculty
Sexual Misconduct and Article 10 of the Statutes
Over the past five years, both faculty disciplinary
boards and the administration have been unhappy with the existing system to
handle allegations of faculty sexual misconduct. During the last contract, such
cases were initially handed over to the Office of Human Resources (HR) for
initial investigation. Findings were then turned over to the normal faculty disciplinary
committees described in Article 10 of the Statutes, who reviewed the case, and
where necessary, determined innocence or recommended sanctions. In several
tough cases, however, the faculty committees were frustrated that they could
not call more witnesses to clarify elements of the HR investigation. University
counsel was upset because it had to broker disputes between the faculty and
administrative HR teams within the university. Mario Cuomo’s 2015 “Enough is
Enough” law 129B, described in the Fall 2015 newsletter, made further state requirements about speed and fairness of such
investigations that intensified intra-university jurisdictional disputes.
As a result, Article 10 of the Statutes was
overhauled to include a separate subsection on faculty sexual
misconduct (Art. 10.05). The principal change was
removing HR from the investigation and giving the case to outside
investigators, mutually vetted by the unions and the administration. HR
maintains an advisory role but does not interfere with the outside
investigation. The investigators are charged with moving quickly and fairly,
and their findings are turned over to the faculty Investigation committee (a
normal Article 10 committee), who may request further information of the
outside investigators. The Investigation Committee’s report is given to the
President’s office/University Counsel, who then may determine that the case is closed.
Otherwise, cases are then forwarded to the faculty Hearing and Deciding
Committee for its recommendations. The Personnel Committee of the Board of
Trustees takes the report of the Hearing and Deciding Committee and makes the
final decision about the case. Appeals may be made to the entire Board of
Trustees, with the recusal of the Board Personnel Committee.
One of the complications of redrafting of Article 10
is the shifting legal landscape posed by both the state and federal law. Currently,
both New York state and the federal government require that schools evaluate
these cases according to “the preponderance of evidence,” which is a weaker
standard of proof than “clear and convincing evidence.” The federal government has
changed its recommendations to schools several times in the past decade, and
the current Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, has said that the federal
government may again change its regulations in the near future by withdrawing
the “Dear Colleague” protocols of 2011.
The result for our proposed contract has been a
general statement in most Art. 10 proceedings that faculty are innocent until
proven otherwise; the administration has the burden to prove an accusation; and
that the standard of evidence shall be “clear and convincing” (Art. 10.09). For sexual misconduct cases, however, the standard of evidence must
conform to federal and state law, which is currently “preponderance of
evidence.”
________________________________________________________________
Intellectual
Property Policy
At the December 2017 chapter meeting of the AAUP, a
number of faculty voiced concerns that the school’s Intellectual Property
policy seemed to have been made with no faculty
consultation at all. (Indeed, for practical reasons, many university policies,
including the Statutes, are drafted and voted upon by the Board of Trustees
without faculty or union consultation.) Faculty at the chapter meeting were
afraid of rumors that anything they typed on a university computer was owned by
the university. Fortunately, such rumors turned out to be untrue, but formal
review of the Intellectual Property policy was a large part of contract
discussions as part of faculty workplace conditions.
Discussions were productive and the administration
freely acknowledged that some parts of its policy were obsolete. These
passages, which made sweeping claims of perpetual university ownership on
faculty inventions, were removed or modified. The unions were also successful
inserting a new category of revenue for faculty inventions (lower than $250,000)
where faculty hold the largest share in the initial returns on an invention. Of
particular concern for faculty publishing
(not inventions), all copyrighted works are exclusively that of faculty
members. Although the Intellectual property policy is technically not part of
the contract, for the first time faculty have been asked to review it as part
of their workplace conditions.
The stakes in the Intellectual Property policy are
all about how to fund faculty incentive to reward both the university and its faculty
inventors. One may ask the simple question, “why don’t faculty have the right
to all the money their inventions
make?” The answer is that all faculty work in the context of resources shared
with the university---labs, offices, computers, and students. Different
universities award varying proportions of funding to inventors but most
recognize the role of shared resources.
In contrast to university profit-sharing practices,
most businesses adopt a “work-for-hire” policy where all employees’ inventions
are strictly owned by their employers,
such as Verizon or IBM. This model likely reduces incentive to invent while an
employee. The challenge for universities is to find a happy middle ground.
Simon Moller, Vice Provost for University Research,
has been charged with finding ways of turning inventions into a revenue stream
for the cash-strapped university. Because it takes a large amount of money
(hundred of thousands of dollars) to bring any invention to market, St. John’s
revenue sharing table awards large amounts of income from a potential invention
to faculty members’ department and college to provide across-the-board
incentives to support such work. Vice Provost Moller hopes that in the future St.
John’s will reap large rewards for successful inventions, but unfortunately we
have yet to do so.
________________________________________________________________
Professor
of the Practice in Tobin
Prior to the proposed contract, the Faculty Council
of the Tobin College of Business and the Board or Trustees both voted to
inaugurate a new faculty line at the college---Professor of the Practice, or “PoPs” (Statutes 7.33-7.37; Contract 9.05 p. 7). These lines have been used at
many business schools across the country to provide student access to
successful professional mentors.
The controversy about them is that these are not research positions---they are
teaching positions. If they were to accumulate in number, they might work
against the academic principles of a research university---knowledge pursued
for its own sake. Because this is a new faculty line, the unions proposed that
St. John’s limit the number of PoPs to 10% within a
given department (Contract 4.03, p. 8). In an open forum on Oct 2, 2017 faculty in Accounting complained that
this unfairly limits the number of PoPs that a
department may need. The unions feels that this may indeed be a concern and
they are certainly willing to revisit the percentage at a later date.
In some ways Accounting is not a representative
department in a Business school. Because of the nature of their professional work,
there are few PhDs in Accounting, and because of their scarcity, they command
an astonishing starting salary. Business school Deans across the country
scratch their heads wondering how they can afford to hire even one Accounting
PhD at the going rate, much less several. It may be the case that some departments,
like Accounting, deserve special consideration in future contracts.
________________________________________________________________
Labor
Management Committee
Pursuant to
the proposed contract, the Labor Management Committee will be meeting in the
Fall 2017 to discuss issues of longstanding concern to both faculty and
administration. This committee was established during the 2011-14 contract but
it met only a few times. The committee is designed to broker issues on gray
areas of the contract where timely workplace decisions have to be made.
The topics of
upcoming meetings will focus on several issues. One of the most vexing is the issue
of internship compensation at CPS, and faculty mentoring in general. Different
programs across the university use internships in different ways. In some
colleges, there has been no faculty compensation for supervising internships,
in others they are compensated with varying practices. At present there is no
system to reward most advising and mentoring at the university—all faculty
supervise student thesis and dissertation work with no compensation.
Other issues include
defining the roles of Directors, Co-Ordinators, and
Faculty Administrators. At present, the university has been operating under the
"Bonaparte memo," written during the late 1990s, which defines and
limits the powers and responsibilities that Faculty Administrators have. Recent
additions of numerous types of program Directors have complicated the issue:
many departments are composed almost entirely of Directors and Co-Ordinators who serve at the pleasure of their Deans, and
whose presence complicate department politics. The initial union attempts to
redefine these roles during negotiations for the 2017-19 contract were
withdrawn due to strong faculty complaint. The unions plan to consult with
department chairs, Directors, Co-Ordinators, and
faculty carefully as they draw up a new plan.
Other major
topics for discussion will include a plan for a standardized 3/3 load for
faculty who currently teach 4/4. Also, the unions have asked for a plan for the
university to begin paying more of the post-2003 faculty member's contributions
to the university health plan.
_____________________________________________________________________
Join National AAUP Via
the “Non-Collective Bargaining” Path
Supporters of
the local chapter must also pay dues to the National AAUP to be eligible to
vote in SJU-AAUP chapter meetings and elections. Because SJU is the only AAUP
chapter in the nation which does not automatically collect dues from payroll on
behalf of the membership, AAUP currently asks St. John’s members to join or renew their National membership through the “non-collective
bargaining" payment path on their website.
SJU-AAUP does
not automatically collect National AAUP dues because our bargaining unit is
composed of two unions---The SJU-AAUP, and the Faculty Association (FA). The
reasons for this continuing relationship is sketched in the Fall 2008 SJU-AAUP Newsletter.
Rest assured,
National AAUP knows we are an important chapter---in 1970, we were the first
private university in American history collectively bargain---but their
website, which was massively overhauled to comply with IRS law in the past
several years, does not yet reflect that fact. As compensation, however, our
local chapter is emailed a list of our national members in good standing, and
we now personally remind our members just before their national membership
lapses.
You can join
the National AAUP here, and use the “non-collective bargaining” pathway:
http://www.aaup.org/membership/join
_________________________________________________________________
SJU-AAUP Chapter
Meetings
Mark your calendar for an SJU-AAUP
Chapter meeting on Monday, Nov 13, 2017.
The location will be announced shortly with video-conferencing to Staten
Island.
All faculty are welcome to our upcoming
chapter meetings, but only local and National AAUP members may vote.
If you wish to
vote, faculty
must support both the local and national chapters (local support is $20 adjunct
/ $50 fulltime; national dues between $58 - $258,
depending on rank). To renew with SJU-AAUP, login on the upper right (if you’ve forgotten
your password, the website will send one to you in seconds), then click “view
profile” on the upper right of our website. Whether you pay online or send a
check, please register through our website.
Faculty new to St. John’s may be
confused by our two faculty unions: since our historic unionization in 1970,
the SJU-AAUP, and the Faculty Association were established collectively bargain
the contract on behalf of faculty. The Faculty Association
(FA)
is completely distinct from us although we work together. Faculty may join one
union, both, or neither---we advocate for all faculty regardless of whether
they have paid us dues. Here is a short background
on the history of SJU’s two-union system, and an explanation why it is
difficult to combine our two unions in the current climate of review by the
National Labor Relations Board.
_____________________________________________________________________
2017 SJU-AAUP Election
Results
In the April
2017, nominations for the 2017-19 terms were uncontested and the following
representatives were elected:
Chapter Officers:
President Frank Le Veness levenesf@stjohns.edu ext. 5720
Vice President Somnath Pal pals@stjohns.edu ext.
1633
Secretary John B. Greg gregj@stjohns.edu ext. 2053
(Corresponding)
Secretary
Caroline Fuchs fuchsc@stjohns.edu ext. 5050
(Recording)
Treasurer Granville Ganter ganterg@stjohns.edu ext. 5617
Executive Council:
College of
Professional Studies
Catherine Ruggieri ruggierc@stjohns.edu ext. 4385
School of
Education
Yvonne
Pratt-Johnson prattjoy@stjohns.edu ext 2645
Pharmacy &
Allied Health
Frank Barile barilef@stjohns.edu ext. 2640
Library William Keogan keoganw@stjohns.edu ext. 6721
Tobin College
of Business
Joseph Giacalone giacaloj@stjohns.edu ext. 7301
St. John's
College Fred Cocozzelli cocozzef@stjohns.edu ext. 5267
At Large Barbara Koziak koziakb@stjohns.edu ext. 5044
At Large Kathryn Shaughnessy shaughnk@stjohns.edu ext. 1454
At Large Charles Traina trainac@stjohns.edu ext. 6166