In December 2016 the remaining 5 Departmental Research Administrators (DRAs) who were not already situated in the Program Administrator I job family were demoted to the PA I job family.
In January PSU-AAUP met with the DRAs and learned that all of them had significant evidence to justify the inclusion of their position in the Program Administrator II job family. The five who had been demoted viewed the downgrading of their position as a demotion without just cause; they were moved to a lower pay range, and there was a significant loss of prestige. All DRA's, however, felt that their position was being mischaracterized and wanted to challenge the decision.
PSU-AAUP reached agreement with administration that the placement decision for the 5 DRA's that were demoted would serve as the placement decision for all DRAs in PA I pursuant to Article 17 Section 4. All DRAs would be granted the ability to appeal that decision pursuant to Article 17 Section 4, and the deadline for all DRA appeals was agreed to be February 20. Nine of the DRA's submitted appeals.
PSU-AAUP and administration also agreed that the timeline for PSU-AAUP to file the grievance for the 5 downgraded DRA's as a demotion without just cause would be placed in abeyance until the Article 17 Section 4 appeal process was complete, and that if PSU-AAUP still felt the grievance was warranted after the appeal process was complete, the grievance would be filed at Step Two.
PSU-AAUP subsequently learned of two decisions about the process that we found troubling: 1) that the classification manager (the administrator who made the decision to move all DRAs into the PA I Job family) was going to be given access to the Job Placement Review appeal advisory committee to the AVP for "preparation," i.e. to present them with the criteria around which to do their review; and, 2) the supervisors of the DRA's were prohibited from submitting their opinion about job placement.
PSU-AAUP submitted a formal objection to these decisions to the AVP HR and cited both as likely procedural defects that would warrant the filing of contractual grievances if the appeals were unsucessful. PSU-AAUP disagrees with much of the criteria used by the classification manager to reach their decision and requested that PSU-AAUP be afforded equal access to the appeal advisory committee to counter the narrative of the classification manager. PSU-AAUP also requested that the supervisors be permitted to submit input into the appeal decision as they were the administrators responsible for assigning work, and their opinion about the positions was not only intrinsic to the Article 17 Section 4 process, it is relevant to the work of the appeals committee.
HR's response was that supervisor input was provided. I spoke to supervisors, however, and that is not what I heard.
At the end of the day, the appeal process has to be have been fair and unbiased. If it turns outwe have procedural defects on which we can act and the appeals have been denied, we will challenge the process