IRP/ULP Update

May 29, 2014 in Campus News

Last Friday [5/23/14], CSUEU and CSU representatives met at PERB Los Angeles Office to discuss the pending charge against San Diego State University regarding their In-Range Progression (IRP) program.  CSUEU filed an unfair labor practice in March because despite increased funding from President Hirshman, employees were receiving automatic denials for any request made on the basis of performance.  The IRP provisions in Article 20 of the union contract list eight criteria for making a request; the SDSU division budget officers, sitting together in the Budget Resources Allocation Committee, decided that no awards would be granted for any performance request.

After employees reported that they were receiving form letters from Human Resources approving their IRP requests on merit but denying them because of the budget policy, CSUEU requested a joint meeting last December between Human resources and Employee Relations and local union leadership.  In the meeting, SDSU revealed that this was a campus wide policy.  CSUEU complained that this was a unilateral change to the IRP program, along with the imposition of new rules on "gradual" workload increases as exempt from the workload criteria of IRP.

In February, CSUEU and HR and ER met again.  This time, management reported that much of the IRP funding provided by the President was still tied up in the divisions and not distributed to employees.  SDSU explained their plan for distribution as "first come, first serve."  No employee could receive a performance-based award -- the most commonly requested action.

In March, CSUEU filed an unfair labor practice charge (ULP) with the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).  The Union alleged that SDSU unilaterally changed the union contract by blocking all performance-based awards and using "gradual workload increase" language.  PERB agreed with the union allegation and issued a formal complaint against the CSU.

The meeting last Friday was the next step toward a formal hearing before an administrative law judge.  PERB holds a mediation conference to see if the parties can reach a settlement.  CSUEU asked for employees who received notices that said they should receive a performance increase but were denied because of campus policy receive their awards.  CSU refused.  The parties are now looking at formal hearing dates in October.

Formal hearing before a judge allows the Union to subpoena witnesses and documents.  Those witnesses are compelled to testify under oath and it is recorded on tape.  CSUEU plans to present witnesses who were denied performance increases, but we also plan to subpoena the decision-makes who denied them.  This would include the division budget officers and their vice presidents.  We also plan to bring President Hirshman into the process so he can see how the campus bureaucracy undermined his good intentions to promote career advancement.

Our next step on campus is to fully inform employees about the case.  We need people who were refused performance-based awards to come forward.  We are particularly interested in employees who received notices that said they were eligible based on merit but were denied because of campus budget policy.  We also want to hear from people who were denied on workload because the increase was "gradual" or "in-class" and any employees whose IRP requests took more than 90 days to complete.

CSUEU chapter leaders Sherry Velthuysen and Bernardo Ng participated in the PERB informal conference.  Employees with IRP information should forward that info to their local job steward or one of the union officers to pass on to union staff.