The payroll fiasco, falling on a long bank weekend, is emblematic of the types of problems coming out of the Employment Office in recent months. There have been so many personnel problems in the District over the last several months, that this issue of the Peerpoint! is intended to address human resource department problems. In fact, the articles below point to numerous problems in every facet of Dr. William WaechterÕs bailiwick. And some of the worst problems are the most recent, culminating in the Action Item related to EBAC that lead to the all-employment meeting with the Board on November 9th.
There was a large turnout for the meeting with the Board, with all employee groups well-represented. Board President, Linda Rosenthal, called up the presidents of each of the employee group, starting with Safety, Crafts and M&O and ending with PSA, MAT and Faculty respectively, to make a statement concerning that employee groupÕs position on the EBAC proposal. Every employee group registered its disapproval of the Action Item. Faculty Association President, Willie Minor, gave a particularly passionate condemnation of the EBAC proposal and defense of the RFP.
Mrs. Rosenthal had invited all members of the audience to register their names if they intended to speak at the beginning of the meeting. Several members of various employee groups spoke against the proposal. Jim Daugherty, GCC faculty member and two-time past chair of the faculty Meet & Confer team, approached the podium and registered his shock and distress at this apparent challenge to the Meet & Confer process. All speakers entreated the Board not to move forward with the proposal.
After all employees had spoken, Board member, Gene Eastin, took the floor and commented that all the statements had been against the EBAC proposal. He asked to see a show of hands of those who supported the proposal. No hands were raised. Nancy Stein spoke next, and thanked the employees who had turned out to let the Board know their feelings. She expressed her concern about a proposal that created such strong sentiments among employees.
Linda Rosenthal concluded the meeting by commenting that it would perhaps be appropriate to have the administration write an administrative regulation concerning the proper role of EBAC. She added that this would be appropriate under policy governance
A tentative proposal concerning the mission, values, membership, scope and processes which will guide EBAC is being circulated among the employee group representatives. It deserves careful scrutiny. Employees must remain vigilant with respect to challenges to their employee manuals.
On November 23rd, the Governing Board was asked to remove the proposed EBAC Articles of Operation from the agenda by Willie Minor and Ann Barrett, President of MAT. After some discussion among the members of the Board, the President of the Board decided not to remove the item. Hence, it did receive first reading.
The Problem is the Client - Not the Consultant
Those who remember the night the Board approved the Peoplesoft contract remember William Waechter and representatives of Peoplesoft hugging each other in their excitement. It should have been the start of a wonderful relationship. To this point it has not been. But most problems which develop between a consultant and a client result when the client does not make it clear what the project requires or does not take the consultant's advice about what the client needs to do. Both problems appear to have beleaguered the MCCCD/Peoplesoft relationship.
Here is a partial list of problems with the Peoplesoft human resources software: (These are just the ones this casual observer has noted or has had brought to her attention):
- The first several pay periods were fraught with errors, contrary to William Waechter's triumphant a-1 proclaiming the success of the new system.
- Faculty hired and who began to teach during the summer were paid as adjunct faculty until Board-approved. However, even once Board-approved, Dr. Waechter resisted retroactively paying these faculty as residential faculty for the period before their approval. He contended that the Peoplesoft program could not accommodate it. Only after Board-member intervention did he seem willing to convince Peoplesoft to make the change.
- Pay stubs no longer enumerate extended contract earnings. Hence faculty have no way to be sure they are being paid correctly for work beyond their basic contract.
- Benefits are required to be planned on a calendar year basis, rather than the fiscal year basis (July 1st to June 30th) of all other financial planning in the District. Dr. Waechter attended the September meeting of EBAC (Employee Benefits Advisory Committee) and explained his intention of changing all employee policy manuals by replacing all references to fiscal year with calendar year. When EBAC representatives suggested that it would be necessary to negotiate such changes through Meet & Confer, during the ensuing discussion he retorted that the policy manuals "weren't worth the paper they were written on." (See Editor's note below).
- Faculty members have found that their flex benefits are included in their gross pay on their check stubs. This inflated gross income is shown even in the year-to-date summary row, gross pay figure. While the Pay Stub Clarification document assures us that the flex benefits will not be included in the W-2 version of our gross pay that will be reported to the IRS, it is not clear why it is appropriate to include it in gross pay on the pay stub.
- District clearly is not running the old and the new payroll systems simultaneously, as correct accounting procedure would require. Surely Peoplesoft did not recommend shutting down the old payroll mechanism the moment District issued the first payroll with the new system.
If they did, they should be sued over the payroll debacle on Oct. 8th. A September 24th article in the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Ohio State University incurred an almost 60% cost over-run on their conversion to Peoplesoft software when they found it necessary to hire consultants and staff members to keep their old systems operating when they experienced difficulties with the conversion. At least OSU did not miss a payroll.
Each of these problems bespeaks either a failure to make clear the system requirements, as in the case of the fiscal/calendar year problem, or a failure to provide a back-up for a complicated new system, as should have been recommended by Peoplesoft in the case of the new payroll system. Is it possible that MCCCD thought we could save money by asking for a bare-bones human resource system? It will not be cheaper if we have to make numerous changes in the software to suit Maricopa's unique situation. Did it appear to be cheaper to shut down the old payroll system once the new one was up and running? It has only been cheaper because the employees of MCCCD were required to bear the risk of a possible payroll snafu - a bet we all lost. Clearly, there have been numerous misjudgments in our relationship with Peoplesoft.
* Editor's note: During the law suit faculty filed against the Board in the early 1990s, the judge in the case clearly perceived the RFP (Residential Faculty Policies) to be a contract. Dr. Waechter made comments in a recent EBAC (Employee Benefits Advisory Committee) meeting to the effect that faculty had sued the Board before, and look at the result, implying that faculty lost the lawsuit because the RFP would not stand up in court as a contract. This is incorrect. The Faculty Association's legal council has assured the FEC (Faculty Executive Council), as recently as last month, that the current RFP would stand up in court as a contract.
Payroll Debacle on October 8th: WhoÕs Accountable?
By Joe Ortiz, Scottsdale Community College
I coped with the payroll mishap of October 8th. Fortunately, I had sufficient cash reserve to deal with it. I'm sure there were some in the Maricopa family who weren't so fortunate. I imagine, for example, that there was some child on that Friday who was told--on the first full weekend of the Arizona State Fair--that now her family hadn't the money to go. I imagine some other promises were broken and some weekend plans were changed. These things can happen when you're counting on a paycheck.
The recent PeopleSoft payroll debacle begs questions of administrative accountability. Specifically, why did we implement this technology without maintaining a redundant system? and why was the district administration so conspicuously quiet during this event? I'm told by a reliable source that District payroll staff received an onslaught of phone calls and A1s from irate employees about not being paid on that day. What an injustice to have put these staff members in such a precarious position. These staff members probably had little to no voice in the PeopleSoft adoption, yet they were asked to account for why it failed on that particular day.
GCC Business Professor, Rod Brooker, in an A1 of 8 October raised what I believe is a core issue in this event: it is sensible to maintain the old accounting system concurrent with the new system until such time that all problems have been resolved. Prior to the implementation of PeopleSoft, we received A1s foreshadowing possible problems and encouraging MCCCD employees to be patient with the changes. The decision-makers around the PeopleSoft purchase and implementation had to know the risks associated with a change of this magnitude. To wit, a recent article in the September 24 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education expounds on the problems that other institutions have had with the PeopleSoft's human resources and payroll systems. Over 400 institutions have purchased PeopleSoft's administrative computing systems, and several have spent millions of dollars trying to make the software work properly within their environments. It only seems natural that the Maricopa leadership would have mined its professional network enough to know that the potential problems were sufficiently large to warrant a conservative transition. I don't understand why there was no immediate and definitive recourse when the payroll calculations would not run on the PeopleSoft system.
Equally disturbing was the lack of a prominent administrative voice during the payroll event as it unfolded on October 8th. Crisis management experts suggest that there are two essential steps in public communications related to an organizational crisis (and I think this qualifies). Organizational leadership must: (1) quell concerns by providing an accurate account of what has happened, and (2) provide details of what steps will be taken to obviate another event. These communications ideally should come from an organization's top level management. With all due respect to Ms. Donna Schober, there are two Vice-Chancellors who sit very close to the PeopleSoft implementation, neither of whom we heard from during the course of the event. It's times like these when real leadership work involves assuaging the concerns of employees and restoring their confidence. A remotely related illustration would be the recent actions of Scottsdale Mayor Sam Campana. A nature preserve established by high school students on city property was inadvertently plowed over by workers during the construction of a golf course. Mayor Campana made a public apology for the mistake, and vowed to work with the students to make it right. Real leadership is embodied in such communicative acts.
In summary, I know that there were several steps taken to alleviate the immediate problems created by the October 8th payroll delay. While the issuance of quickie checks and the notice to creditors were helpful actions, it is unfortunate that this college district had to endure such an event at all. It's really ironic that Maricopa prides itself as a national leader in new technology, but the human leadership surrounding this technology sometimes leaves questions unanswered.
Wondering What Happened to Your Sick Leave?
You may have noticed that the sick leave indicated on your pay stub is 25% lower than what it was on your last pay stub of the Spring semester. This is actually correct and does not reduce the number of days of sick leave you have accumulated. The old payroll system never could figure out that faculty have a 30 hour work week. It assumed a 40 hour work week, and therefore deducted eight hours for every day you were absent. The new system correctly recognizes the 30 hour work week and will deduct six hours for every day you are absent. Hence the 25% fewer sick leave hours represents the same number of days of sick leave as the prior system.
Sick Leave for Adjunct Faculty?
A proposal was made to the CEC (Chancellor's Executive Committee) this Fall that adjunct faculty be given sick leave. It seemed to be the opinion of the college presidents that this would not be a costly program, and they expressed a willingness to pay for it out of the individual colleges' funds. The FEC (Faculty Executive Council) had some reservations about the proposal. For all that adjunct faculty are, arguably, underpaid, this proposal would have had the potential to be quite expensive. It would have created an incentive for adjunct faculty to miss classes even in the case that they were not ill. Such a program also would have left 49%ers uncovered. Faculty representatives from CGCC proposed providing 49%ers with sick leave, too. Discussion among faculty also brought forward a proposal to see if retiring faculty who are unable to receive all of their sick leave could bank the unclaimed part for use by 49%ers. Following further administrative consideration the proposal has been shelved for now.
But for OYOs, No Benefits
At the same time that the District was considering sick leave for adjunct faculty, the District was preparing to eliminate or cut benefits for OYOs (one-year-only employees). Last year there were 472 OYOs in Maricopa. The District estimates that it could save $2 million by eliminating OYO benefits.
This is a shocking number of OYOs. About a quarter of these contract employees are faculty, which amounts to 118 faculty, or almost 12 faculty members per campus. Given that some campuses staff faculty to the 90/10 ratio required by the RFP (Residential Faculty Policies), for example GCC, the deficit at other campuses must be that much worse. To justify an OYO, a department chair must have a full-load of unstaffed classes. To have that number of OYO positions, most colleges must not be staffing anywhere near the 90/10 ratio. Before MCCCD takes on the financial obligation of paying adjunct faculty sick leave, it should be staffing faculty positions to the 90/10 ratio. That would do adjunct faculty the most good, as they often are hired into full time positions. Then the potential savings from eliminating OYO benefits would shrink. The benefits would be paid to residential faculty instead, as they should be. The time is right to start grieving these insufficient staffing ratios.
About Your Retirement Account
Faculty receive an annual report from the Arizona State Retirement System which indicates the number of years they have contributed to the system. Perhaps you have noticed that each year your report shows the number of years you have worked to be .34 of a year less than you have actually worked. This is the result of a payroll change several years ago. You are entitled to the additional one third of a year.
As faculty have retired in recent years, each individual has had to appeal to the State Retirement System to correct its figures. It is time to do a one time only correction for all employees. Payroll should make this correction for once and for all.
Singing the Human Resources Blues
By Rosemary Kesler of Gateway Community College
It is June 1st. Classes start July 5th, and I have finally found a qualified person to teach Surgery Technology. It is difficult to find faculty for this position. A search last semester turned up only 2 unqualified applicants. I am delighted!
The prospective instructor fills out the application form, has an interview with the Dean of Instruction, agrees to accept an OYO position, applies for a teaching certificate, sends for transcripts, and submits a resume. Everything is ready and classes start.
In the middle of July, the instructor asks when are we paid. It takes me two weeks (it is summer) to track down the fact that the paperwork necessary to satisfy Human Resources has not been completed. The Dean of Instruction has completed what previously had been required, but lo and behold, Human Resources has changed the rules and has forgotten to tell anyone. By now the instructor has been working for 4 weeks without pay! I finally call the Vice-Chancellor and am told the instructor messed up!!!! Not to worry, a temporary check and a time card are issued and an hourly rate of pay is agreed upon.
The instructor goes to the New Employee Orientation, and is told about the benefits and the wonders of Maricopa. The employee is Board-approved in September and goes from a time card (which, by the way, was routed around the campus to multiple people with the rate of pay and SS# available to anyone who was on the routing list) to a regular paycheck. It is now November and 5 months since the Instructor was, we think, hired. There is still no placement on the salary scale and still no benefits.
Is it unreasonable for me to think that we have a problem down at Human Resources? What do you think the instructor thinks of Maricopa?
A Seriously Flawed Job Description
Nearby is the current boilerplate job description for faculty positions that was devised by and is being used by the District Employment office. Numerous features of this job description have elicited concerns from faculty throughout the District. Below are the reactions of the GCC Senate which were submitted to the Executive Council in May at a time when faculty thought they would have the opportunity to have input to the job description by means of a subcommittee that Dr. de los Santos had created. The subcommittee met only once, however, and the request for input was only made at that meeting.
- The job summary begins "Commits to and supports the philosophy, mission and goals of the Maricopa County Community College District. Provides instruction and conducts classes in accordance with the philosophy of the College.Ó This would appear to be an abridgment of the faculty's academic freedom. What this provision suggests is that if the District Administration adopted a pedagogical philosophy, like the Desired Learning Paradigm of a few years ago, that faculty who did not accept that philosophical posture could be subject to dismissal for not carrying out their job requirements. As it was, Instructional Councils resoundingly rejected the Desired Learning Paradigm. This appears to be a surreptitious means by which the district Administration could accomplish its goals of determining the pedagogical philosophy within the District.
- The statement concerning "Supervision Received" should be renamed and restated. Supervision is too strong a word for the administrative function of a chairperson. Such persons are faculty themselves; a peer among peers. Supervision is a word appropriate to a manufacturing setting, not a college.
- The "Essential Functions" part of the job description includes the statement "integrate and develop technology-based educational delivery systems to instruct a diverse population of students".
This again appears to violate the faculty's academic freedom. It is possible to imagine disciplines in which technology-based instruction might be inappropriate, as perhaps in the case of the fine arts; i.e., painting or ceramics. Clearly, this is for the faculty to decide, not the district administration by means of the boilerplate job description.
Also, faculty who have been part of faculty hiring committees that have had to use this job description report that the District Employment Office has held them scrupulously to the "essential functions" list. Hence the hiring committees were not allowed to consider prospective candidates who neglected to indicate in their cover letters or resumes that they write syllabi for their courses and keep office hours. For most of us, that would go without saying. That omission would cost you an interview in MCCCD these days.
- Under "Minimum Qualifications" is the traditional statement concerning the requirement that faculty in academic positions have a masters degree or higher earned degree with 24 hours of upper division and/or graduate credit in the field to be taught. Since the institution of the new job description, however, colleges' screening committees have been told that they cannot write job descriptions that would require or even prefer candidates with a least a masters degree in the field to be taught. In conclusion, the draft job description is flawed, both in its content and in its application. It includes provisions that abridge academic freedom and ascribe too much oversight responsibility to chairpersons. Furthermore, the manner in which the Employment Office is applying the job description will eliminate qualified candidates for having neglected to mention their willingness to keep office hours and write syllabi, while including under-qualified candidates lacking in graduate course work in their subject to be taught.
The following is the MCCCD job description for instructional faculty.
Title: Instructional Faculty
Job Summary
Commits to and supports the philosophy, mission and goals of the Maricopa Council Community College District. Provides instructions and conducts classes in accordance with the philosophy of the College and within the scope of a defined course of study. Demonstrates commitment to student academic success.
Supervision received
Receives general direction and supervision from a department/division chair or college dean.
Essential Functions
Develops instructional materials, curriculum, syllabi/course outlines, evaluation tools; integrate and develop technology-based educational delivery systems to instruct a diverse population of students; supervise and instruct students in classroom, lab or off-campus setting; develop and enhance knowledge of subject matter taught and individual training skills required to remain current with new trends and developments through attendance at conferences, courses, seminars, and/or workshops; evaluate knowledge of subject matter taught and monitor studentÕs scholastic records; maintain office hours and participate in departmental, college and district committees and projects.
Minimum Qualifications
The ability to obtain a State of Arizona Community College Teaching Certificate.
The Academic area requires a masterÕs degree or higher earned degree from an accredited college or university with at least twenty-four (24) semester hours or thirty-six (36) quarter hours of upper division and/or graduate credit in the field to be taught.
The Occupational area requires of the following: bachelorÕs degree from an accredited college or university and, in addition, at least three (3) years of directly related occupational experience and skill in the field to be taught. or an associateÕs degree or at least sixty-four (64) semester hours from an accredited college or university and, in addition, at least sixty-four semester hours from an accredited college or university and in addition, at least five (5) years of directly related occupational experience in the field to be taught. or masterÕs degree or higher earned degree from an accredited college or university with at least twenty-four (24) semester or thirty-six (36) quarter hours of upper division and/or graduate credit in the field to be taught.
Special Working Conditions
May need to lift equipment weighing up to 40 lbs. Evening and weekend hours may be required.
Faculty Transfers Made More Difficult
Faculty have been expressing concern about changes made in the faculty transfer policy by the Employment Office. Last spring, the Employment Office indicated its intention of truncating the time between when faculty would be informed of an open position and when applications would be due. The Faculty Executive Council expressed its concern, and the change was rescinded.
Over the summer, however, the process was changed to a very abbreviated application interval. Furthermore, the policy stipulated that if the department hiring was already looking through the hiring pool, an application for a transfer would not be considered. Given the speed with which hiring committees work late in the summer, this policy appeared likely to preclude District faculty from the possibility of transfers.
This fall, the transfer announcement process appears to have reverted to the policy used in the spring. That policy allows faculty ten working days to file their application for a transfer from the time the position is opened to the time it is closed. More importantly, however, this represents another example of unilateral policy changes by the Employment Office into which faculty had no input despite their direct effect on faculty.
MCCCD FACULTY ASSOCIATION 1999-2000 OFFICERS
WILLIE MINOR, PRESIDENT
ROSEMARY KESLER, PRESIDENT-ELECT
TOM BUTLER, SECRETARY
MARK RICHARD, TREASURER
GAY GARESCHE, PEERPOINT EDITOR
FACULTY ASSOCIATION OFFICE
PHONE.....(480)731-8113
PEERPOINT! is the voice of the faculty in the Maricopa County Community College District. We welcome and encourage your suggestions, ideas, and comments. Let us know what you would like to see in PEERPOINT! You can share information with your Senate President, Campus Representative, or contact PEERPOINT! editor, Gay Garesche, 623-845-3701.