UA Wins in Arbitration!
We received some very good news on Friday, March 20. Your union was successful in the arbitration case we brought against the University for laying off two librarians at the beginning of the academic year. The arbitrator ruled in United Academics’ favor, agreeing that university administrators did not properly consider the Collective Bargaining Agreement's seniority considerations when the librarians were terminated, and thus mandating the immediate rescission of the layoffs.
In plain English: UA fought back and won. The librarians have their jobs back.
Our contract contains what is known as a "sufficient abilities" clause. This means that if layoffs occur, a bargaining unit member who has the competency to carry out the work that remains must be given deference in terms of seniority. The administration attempted to assert that our contract contains what is known as a "relative abilities" clause, skirting a straight reading of our CBA. A “relative abilities” clause would allow them to choose whoever they deemed was the "best fit" for remaining work, through academic judgement that is unassailable in arbitration. However, academic judgement is not a protective cloak that prevents all scrutiny.
The arbitrator refused to accept the admin's framing and instead recognized the clear language in our contract. In their words:
Essentially, the University’s argument would nullify seniority protections for employees, and even in a situation where there were two identical positions, it could wear its “academic judgment hat” and determine that one of those employees was the “best fit” for the remaining position.
This decision is binding and provides clarity going forward for a very important provision of our Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Going forward, we will be vigilant as we oversee the implementation of the arbitrator's decision. While we hope that the administration uses attrition to address any further budgetary concerns going forward, as they have declared is their intention in other schools, it is possible that they will proceed with more layoffs. If that is the case, they will have to heed seniority considerations. Furthermore, though we did not contest the admin's position that the layoffs were necessitated by budgetary considerations given the egregious violation in terms of seniority provisions, we will also push back on their narrative that a financial deficit necessitates layoffs going forward. Last year, in the run-up to the various rounds of layoffs that occurred, the admin justified its actions through pessimistic budget projections. Since that time, economic data shows that at the close of the fiscal year the university did not face the kind of deficit initially projected, and in fact had a surplus. Our university is not in as dire a financial situation as was predicted a year ago. We have also engaged an economist with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) to conduct a forensic analysis of the overall university budget, and this has revealed to us important data regarding finances that we will be able to rely on in future arbitrations and in bargaining, which begins in less than a year.
In other news, United Academics also brought to arbitration the layoff of a member in one of our smaller colleges on campus, allegedly due to inadequate resources to fund their position. We left the first day of arbitration feeling confident in both the financial case we presented and the lack of seniority consideration. There were many other layers in this case. In the end, we settled with the administration after the first day. The administration agreed to rescind the layoff notice.
We are pleased that three faculty members, all of whom have worked more than a decade at our university, are returning from Spring Break without an imminent layoff hanging over them. It is important to point out that while we were successful in these cases, we are still awaiting the decision from the administrative law judge for the unfair labor practice complaint that we filed for the administration's refusal to hand over all the names of terminated employees in the College of Arts and Sciences in June. We expect that decision soon.