This second labor management meeting was attended by 15 PSC members and 5 members of the management team.

The first item on the agenda was the internal calendar. Workers want a SLU calendar that reflects campus events, including those with partners. After the last LM meeting, management added events to the staff daily attendance email. The problem is that staff daily attendance does not go to faculty and adjunct titles. It is also only day of, without lead time. We emphasized that a shared calendar is logistically necessary and would indicate management’s respect and trust of SLU employees. Unfortunately, management continues to be reluctant to make the SLU community aware when partners use our space. They are worried that staff interactions with partners will jeopardize sensitive partner relationships. The dean mentioned that the school serves the labor movement, and we should not be asking union partners for anything or making them feel pressured. He was not aware that not everyone gets staff daily attendance, and said they would add information on the day’s events to MS Teams, where people can subscribe. We pointed out that partners end up communicating with staff spontaneously when they are on campus, including asking for office supplies and printing, and that staff have been reprimanded for sharing these. Coworkers in public programming brought up the need for a unified calendar easily found on the website. In the end, management agreed to develop a calendar for the website, “without the sensitive information”.

The second item was also a follow up item – on mandatory reporting. Almost all PSC members at SLU are now mandatory reporters for sex-based misconduct. Please look over this policy because unless you are explicitly exempt, you do have to contact the Title IX coordinator, Meghan Moore-Wilk ([email protected]). We continued to emphasize the lack of clear guidance for what this means for us as workers. Progress was made on this issue. Management agreed that information about mandatory reporting should be included in the pre-term meeting and the faculty handbook, and will share sample syllabi language. They are interested in hosting multiple sessions to inform workers, as needed. Per our request, they will share with students a list of confidential employees who are exempt from mandatory reporting requirements. This is important for students to know who may not want their experience to be shared with Title IX office. Management shared that there has been only one case at SLU in two years. CUNY-wide, management is not imposing definitive penalties for failure to report, but there are instances of lawsuits where students are claiming a faculty member was told but did not report as required (not at SLU).

We postponed the discussion of HEO reclassification because several key coworkers who were planning to speak on this had to attend competing meetings.

The third item we brought to the table was new and revolved around our request for professional development and clear protocols/resources around hiring. Although hiring processes at SLU are largely in the hand of Central HR and are plagued with delays, there are things we can do to improve it. There is currently a lack of clear description of how the convoluted and ever-changing process of hiring works for different titles. We asked for documents with guidance on hiring processes for the different titles, from NTAs to HEOs to lecturers. In addition, we asked for periodic workshops on hiring. Management remarked that such documents existed but maybe were not readily available and that they were currently getting reviewed and revised to simplify and reorder the procedures. Members of management could not agree where these documents resided and how they were shared with us. An associate dean insisted that everyone under the Office of Academic Affairs has to go through one specific staff member, while the dean mentioned that that would also be changing. HR pointed out that they have held trainings for managers, and one of our coworkers pointed out that staff who are not official managers still have to do hiring. We also stressed the importance of knowing the timeline – how long each hiring step is expected to take. The dean said that the hiring guide which they are revisiting currently will be ready in 1-2 months.

For our final item, we returned to health and safety. We started by requesting that health and safety issues be communicated in a timely manner to affected workers. Currently, when such communication happens, it is to the individual worker who complained. For example, if the heat is out on the 14^th floor, there needs to be an email to all workers affected. Management promised that they would proactively create lists of workers to contact based on the floor plan. We also reminded them that heat has been out for everyone before, and that there could have been a school-wide email about that. Timely communication helps create a sense of dignity in the workplace.