SLU union members showed up in force to the first labor management meeting of the academic year. Over 30 people joined, filling the zoom screen with red PSC backgrounds.

The meeting started with members reminding management that SLU is a labor and social justice school and that when management and members work together, we can resolve issues. Here are some things that came up.

NTA benefits eligibility and hours: Lack of clarity about the number of hours NTAs must work to become eligible for health benefits. Members are asking for written clarification and a retraction of new hour requirements for eligibility sent by the Graduate Center HR. NTAs who work the full 225 hours in fall and/or winter, regardless of weekly distribution, must be considered eligible for health insurance benefits

Ongoing HR issues: Members raised the issue of on-time payments for adjuncts and NTAs. Members identified tax implications for late payments; lack of communication from management, explaining the cause of the problem; notifying adjuncts of available options when they are not paid and members requested an apology from management and guidance on how to request advance payments when payments are late.

HR hiring process and onboarding: Members raised the issue of delayed response to emails and phone calls; long delays between requesting positions and hiring positions; multiple approvals from multiple offices added to the delay, which continues despite training on the process; an overreliance on emails to submit information which creates additional bottlenecks in the hiring process. Solutions offered included using SharePoint to upload all documents. This would centralize information gathering and processing. We made progress on this issue because management agreed to meet in a subcommittee with the union to work on HR issues specifically. If you are interested in supporting the work of this subcommittee, email [email protected].

Ongoing communication issues: Members informed management of the need for a mass email notifying instructional staff of SLU’s tuition waiver process and clarity from management on how decisions regarding public safety officers that we now have were made. Management will send an email explaining the public safety decision. PSC will identify one member to help on a listserv committee, as people continue to be left off communications and listservs are not consistently used.

Mandatory Training for Adjuncts: Adjuncts are told to do 6 hours of mandatory training when those who teach one class can only use 3 of their office hours to do these trainings. Management will email all adjuncts notifying them that it is not 6 hours but 3 hours if they teach one class and will “look into” the possibility of paying for the pre-term meeting. Unfortunately, although everyone agreed that people should be paid for required work, management did not want to take the step of potentially setting precedent of paying adjuncts for these trainings, fearing rocking the larger CUNY boat powered by exploited adjunct labor. SLU union members are working with the larger PSC to address this problem.

Ongoing issues: Private meeting space for adjunct faculty; management will notify adjunct faculty how to access shared office space. Members raised office temperature concerns and the launch of the Health and Safety committee. Management identified their representatives on the Health and Safety Committee.

The next Labor Management meeting will take place on Tuesday, November 25^th  11-12:30 on zoom. All PSC members at SLU are encouraged to participate in the school-wide union meeting which will be held the week of November 3^rd and the planning meeting for the November 25^th Labor Management meeting will be held the week of November 17^th ; exact dates and times will be emailed to members well in advance of the meetings. The labor management meeting is our opportunity to bring our issues to management. There are still several outstanding items from the last meeting. For example, overall HR concerns and lax communication between management and workers on important issues must be address