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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTaurozzi 91-06-13 IN THE MATTER OF AN ARBITRATION GEORGE BROWN COLLEGE (the College) - AND - ONTARIO PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYEE'S UNION (the Union) GRIEVANCE OF MR. ~. TAUROZZI - Job Posting (the Grievor) BOARD OF ARBITRATION: (the Board) A. M. KRUGER - Chair S. MURRAY - Member M. L. TIMS - Member APPEARANCES: For the College - S. Gleave and others For the Union - M. Wright and others HEARINGS AT TORONTO, ONTARIO, MARCH 11 and 14, 1991 Page 2 This matter comes before this Board as a result of a grievance filed by Mr. Taurozzi on August 3, 1989 arising from the outcome of a competition for a job posted by the College on June 16, 1989. At the outset of the hearing the parties agreed that this matter was properly before this Board. Others affected by the outcome of these proceedings were notified of their rights and Messrs. Wheeler and Reid were present at the March 11 hearing. The College on June 16, 1989 posted an opening for a Technologist C at the St. James campus. The parties agree that this job requires both sophisticated technical skills and inter- personal skills. The incumbent must be a skilled tradesman and have considerable knowledge of trades other than his/her own trade. A Technologist C must be able to work with a staff trained in a variety of trades as well as with outside contractors. The job posting is reproduced here in full:- INTERNAL POSTING--SUPPORT - '~' (Open lo men and women currehtly on George Brown College's Full-Time Stall) CLASSIFICATION: Technologist C INCUMBENT; W. Watson SALARY; $35,713.~;0 - $39,832,00 ($17,17-$1 ). i 5/hr.) PAY BAND; I I DIVISION= Physical Resources CAMPUS= St. James COMPETITION #= 8) - 120 ALLOWANCE= EFFECTIVE DATE= A.S.A.P. STATUS= Probationary AFFILIATION: OPSEU--Support PUBLICATION DAT'E= June 16, I)8) CLOSING DATE= June 23, ! ~89 QUALIFICATIONS; -Three year Community College .Diploma-in Mechanical: .Engineering Technology or acceptable equivalent of training and experience - Up to eight years progressively responsible experience in physical plant operations and building maintenance - Good interpersonal and communication skilJs DUTIES= - Manages a work control centre involving' the systematic development and equipme,nt of the work force - Co-ordinates the work of service and building contractors - Acts a resource in the development of preventative maintenance and energy' management programs - Acts as lead hand of a group of twelve to sixteen technicians~ tradesmen, and handymen to maintain an excellent building environment for students and staff - Performs other related duties as assigned TO APPLY= Please send a covering letter (quoting competition number) and a resume (detailing education and experience) to: The Manager, Employment Services 500 MacPherson Avenue Page 3 There were four applicants for the position including the grievor, Mr. C. Scott who was the succesful applicant and Messrs. D. Johnson and A. Morfetas who have also grieved but whose claims are not before this Board. The provision in the collective agreement which Mr. Taurozzi claims was violated is section 17.1.1 and in particular the opening paragraph of that provision which states:- 17.1.1 Coonsideration - Bargaining Unit Employees When a vacancy in the bargaining unit occurs and employees within the bargaining unit make application for such vacant position, the College will give proper consideration to the qualifications, experience, and seniority of all applicants in relation to the requirements of the vacant position. Notwithstanding the foregoing, where there is no increase in the complement of bargaining unit employees in the Department within which the vacancy arose, the College may forego posting and fill such vacancy by appointing a qualified bargaining unit applicant from the Department. The grievance alleges that in violation of article 17.1.1 there was not proper consideration of the qualification, experience and seniority of the applicants. The remedy sought is a re-run of the job competition in a manner that would remedy the alleged deficiencies in the competition that resulted in this grievance. Page 4 The questions this Board must resolve are the following:- 1. Was the procedure in the job competition flawed? 2. If so, were the flaws so serious as to justify consider- ation by the Board of a re-run of the competition? 3. Does the evidence indicate that should a re-run be ordered, that the grievor might be able to succeed in the competition against Mr. Scott, the successful applicant? This last question is complicated by the fact that Mr. Scott no longer holds the position of Technologist C. A short time after the competition, Mr. Scott decided to resign from that position and to return to his former job as a mechanical tradesmen. The College did not re-post the job but transferred Mr. J. wheeler a Technican C at the Castle Loma campus to the St. James campus. This opened a position of Technologist C at the Castle Loma campus. A competition was held and Mr. $. Reid, the President of the Local Union, succeeded in that competition. As we already indicated Messrs. Reid and Wheeler were invited to appear and to participate in these proceedings. Let us turn first to the events on July 21, 1989 when interviews of the applicants were held and the decision was made to award the position to Mr. Scott. As we noted earlier the job had been posted and four employees applied. A committee of three was established to review these applications, interview the candidates and rank them in order of suitability for the job. Sally Layton, the Director of Human Resources, James Graham, the Director of Physical Resources Page 5 and Paul Lewis, Manager of Physical Plant Operations served on this committee. Ms. Layton checked the files of the applicants prior to the interviews to inform her colleagues of any relevant information that might be there. The committee met on July 21, 1989 at 9 A.M. In the case of the grievor, there was no recent evaluation of his performance and she reported that there was nothing of interest in his file. Ms. Layton then led a discussion of the procedures to be followed. She distributed evaluation sheets to score each candidate on Relevant Education, Relevant Experience, Interpersonal Skills and Communications Skills. They were to be rated by each committee member independently on a scale of 0 to 5 where zero was unacceptable, three was average and five was outstanding. The members of the committee then developed a set of ten questions that they agreed to put to each of the four candidates. That same day the four candidates were interviewed beginning with Mr. Scott at about 9:45 A.M. and ending with Mr. Taurozzi at 1:15 P.M. All three committee members testified that after the interviews, the Committee discussed the rating system and agreed on the criteria for assigning ratings. Included in this discussion was an agreement that eight years of experience would be rated at 3. They then rated all candidates independently and later discussed the results of their ratings. Page 6 The Board received in evidence copies of both the questions prepared for the interviews and the rating sheets used to score the candidates. The questions have little to do with relevant education or relevant experience. For this the committee relied on the resumes submitted by the candidates with their applications for this position, the personal knowledge Messrs. Graham and Lewis had of the applicants, all four of whom were under their jurisdiction, and any other information the applicants might volunteer in the course of the interviews. What the interview questions were designed to disclose were inter- personal and communication skills of the candidates. The ratings of each of the four candidates on all four criteria by all three committee members were identical. However, Mr. Lewis did alter his score for Mr. Johnson, one of the applicants, changing his rating of 4 on Communication Skills to a 3 when the committee members met to compare and discuss their ratings immediately after the last interview. This brought his scores into line with his colleagues. The score sheets also show that Ms. Layton and Mr. Graham made notes on the interviews along with their scores while Mr. Lewis did not make any written comments during the interviews. If we compare the scores of Mr. Scott and Mr. Taurozzi we find they both received a score of 3 on Relevant Education, Mr. Scott received a 5 for Relevant Experience whereas the grievor received a score of 2 in this area. Both were given a score of 4 on interpersonal skills. In the area of communication skills Mr. Page 7 Scott received 4 and the grievor 5. The result was that all three committee members gave Mr. Scott a total score of 16 and Mr. Taurozzi a total score of 14. To complete the record, we note that the other two candidates received total scores of 15 and 13. Finally the parties agree that Mr. Scott had four years more seniority than the grievor at the College. Mr. Taurozzi's complaint is that the competition was not fair and that the College had already decided to award the job to Mr. Scott before the interviews were conducted. After Mr. Watson passed away, Mr. Scott was assigned to the position of lead hand. Mr. Taurozzi testified that Mr. Scott told him that he would not continue as lead hand unless he was promoted to Technologist C. Soon after, the Technologist C position was posted. The grievor concluded that Mr. Scott had complained to management who agreed to his request and posted this position in order to keep Mr. Scott as lead hand. In further support of this position, counsel for the Union pointed to some puzzling features of the job posting under Qualifications. The first was a requirement that the incumbent be trained in the mechanical trades. There was no reason to emphasize mechanical over other skills except that Mr. Scott was trained in the mechanical area while the grievor was an electrician. Furthermore, the job posting calls for "up to eight years" of experience which would imply that anyone with eight years experience would receive a score of 5. Yet in their Page 8 evidence, the three committee members said that they viewed eight years experience as minimal and gave it a score of 3. The grievor had less than eight years experience and so scored only 2 whereas Mr. Scott had been in the mechanical trades for almost forty years and so scored 5 on experience. The Union also points to several other aspects of the process that it finds disturbing. Only Ms. Layton saw the personel files of the candidates and her colleagues relied on her report for evidence in those files. While all other applicants had recent evaluations of their work performance on file, the grievor had not been evaluated recently for reasons unknown to Mr. Taurozzi. The Union was also concerned that no questions were raised at the interviews to test the technical skills of the candidates. The College itself says that this job requires sophisticated technical skills as well as interpersonal skills. Yet the interviews totally neglected the former and focused exclusively on the latter. The questions used in the interviews were not of the type that could be evaluated objectively but rather were highly subjective. All members of the committee conceded that the questions put to the candidates did not correlate to the four areas being scored. This made the process all the more impressionistic. The scores were subjective. It also was surprising to note that all three evaluations had identical scores for each candidates on all four areas. The fact that Mr. Lewis altered the one score where he was out of line with his Page 9 colleagues is further support for the suggestion that they scored collusively. Finally, the Union pointed to evidence from the three committee members indicating differences among them in how they weighted seniority, a factor omitted from the scoring sheets but required to be considered under article 17.1.1. In response, the position of management is that the competition was fair and all candidates were properly considered. It was regrettable that the person who had directly supervised the candidates and was most familiar with their work, Mr. Wm. Watson, had passed away some months before the competition. Normally he would have served on the selection committee or at least been consulted for his views of the skills of the applicants. The late Mr. Watson reported to Mr. Lewis who in turn reported to Mr. Graham. This meant that the committee had on it those best able to assess the fitness of the candidates for the job at issue. Mr. Graham told the Board that prior to becoming Director of Physical Resources, he held a position that involved him in day to day contact with all four applicants. In fact, he had hired the grievor and two of the other candidates. He felt that he was familiar with their work experience and skills. While the job posting did specify mechanical skills, the three committee members ignored that and considered all relevant trades equally. For this reason both Mr. Scott and Mr. Taurozzi received identical scores on relevant education. Neither had diplomas in Mechanical Engineerring but both were journeymen in Page 10 their trades. It is true that the wording of the job posting in requiring "Up to eight years" of experience was vague. However, all the committee members had a common view of eight years as a minimum for this demanding job and all scored relevant experience in the same way so that candidates were fairly treated. Mr. Scott had almost forty years experience in his trade and for the last ten years has frequently filled in for Mr. Watson as a Technologist C when Mr. Watson was absent. The grievor had been a journeyman only since 1984 and had filled in as a Technologist C only on a few occasions. The fact that the interview questions focused on assessing interpersonal and communication skills was logical under the circumstances. The resumes provided the required information on education and experience and what was lacking was information on the other two areas which could not be gleaned from the resumes. It is true that the questions were somewhat subjective and scoring based on them was somewhat unimpressionistic. However, interpersonal and communication skills are matters that are difficult to score objectively and subjective ratings are almost inevitable. The questions included some that required the candidates to explain how they would have handled certain situations and these sorts of questions are very desirable ways to evaluate these skills. Even without considering seniority Mr. Scott scored above the grievor. When seniority was introduced, it reinforced the factors favouring Mr. Scott. Page 11 One of the Union's witnesses, Mr. Reid, the local union President, in fact found the procedure followed here to be satisfactory and was pleased that the candidate with the most seniority was successful in the competition. As for the failure to appraise his work when others were evaluated by the late Mr. Watson, the grievor never complained or asked for an evaluation. The fact that Messrs. Graham and Lewis did not see Mr. Taurozzi's file is irrelevant since Ms. Layton did look at it and there was nothing there that would have 8ssisted the committee. We have only Mr. Taurozzi's word as to the alleged complaint of Mr. Scott concerning his work as lead hand without being a Technologist C. Mr. Scott could have testified but was not called as a union witness. Only Ms. Layton was asked whether Mr. Scott complained to her about his classification and she said she had never been asked by Mr. Scott to reclassify him to Technologist C. THE DECISION The Board has carefully considered the evidence and argument of the parties at our hearings. Let us begin with Exhibit 2, the Job Posting. We find that the qualifications section of the job posting was developed in a slipshod manner. The College conceded that there was no basis for emphasizing mechanical trade skills over other relevant skills. As for the "up to eight years" experience, it is an absurd Page 12 requirement which would, if applied as written, disqualifies candidates with more than eight years experience. However, the Union did not grieve the Job Posting. Nor is there evidence that it was deliberately rigged in favour of Mr. Scott. Indeed, the search committee ignored the mechanical trade requirement and treated skills in all relevant trades equally. Both the grievor and Mr. Scott received identical scores on relevant education and the evidence from their resumes supports this finding. As for the "eight years", the Committee members all took this to mean that at least eight years experience was desirable for this job. That too appears to be a reasonable requirement given the nature of the position which involves knowledge of a range of trades and not just a single trade. We will comment further on "relevant experience" below. As for the interpersonal and communication skills, the grievor's complaint is not his score but that the questions lent themselves to subjective or impressionistic evaluation. He also expressed concern about Mr. Lewis' decision to alter his rating on Mr. Johnson's communication skills. The interview questions focused on these areas. As for their being subjective or impressionistic, in appraising areas such as interpersonal skills there is bound to be a subjective element particularly when there is reliance on a brief interview. What is important is that this was done in good faith and without bias or discrimination. Indeed the grievor was scored higher than Mr. Scott in these areas. Page 13 We, therefore, return to the matter of relevant experience which is the central issue in Mr. Taurozzi's complaint. We have already noted that the requirement of at least eight years relevant experience seems reasonable given the responsibilities and duties associated with the Technologist C position. That alone would justify the low score given to the grievor. Further- more, Mr. Scott had almost forty years experience in his trade and had very frequently filled in at Technologist C for a ten year period when Mr. Watson was absent. There were no complaints about the work of either of these two candidates. The long record of relevant experience of Mr. Scott certainly supports the high score assigned to him. As for the failure of the committee to look at Mr. Taurozzi's file, it is agreed that there was nothing relevant in the files. Nothing in the collective agreement requires such an evaluation. As for the failure of the interviewer to deal with relevant experience, we cannot conclude that this factor was not properly considered. The committee had relevant information from the resumes. Mr. Watson was not available to sit on the committee or to be consulted. No member of management was in a better position to evaluate the experience of the candidates as it related to this job than Messrs. Lewis and Graham who were on the committee. It is hard to see how one or two interviewers questions related to experience would have made any difference to the final outcome. But even if Mr. Taurozzi's score had been raised by such questions, it would not have brought him to a score equal to Mr. Page 14 Scott after seniority was factored in. Mr. Taurozzi's complaint stems largely from what he heard from Mr. Scott prior to the competition. There was no evidence from Mr. Scott. Nor was there any evidence that anyone in manage- ment was aware of his complaint or that it influenced either the decision to post the job or award it to Mr. Scott'. While there were flaws in the job posting which were then reflected in the appraisal of the candidates, we do not find these flaws to be so serious as to invalidate the process or the results. The search committee set its requirements in a reasonable way and went about its work of assessing Messrs. Scott and Ta~'rozzi in a reasonable way. We see no basis for interferring with the decision reached by the College in this matter and accordingly, we dismiss this grievance. Toronto, Ontario, this/3~-~ay , 1991. DATED at ./ ~A. M. Kruger~ ..... Addendum Although this board member ultimately concurs with the decision of the majority there are a number of issues that should be addressed. 1. It is inappropriate to post a position requiring for instance "up to eight years required" and then adjudicate the applicants based on eight years experience. 2. It is not appropriate that all panel members had not reviewed the personnel files or that some members had had performance appraisals and others had not. 3. It is inappropriate to require a particular trade when the standards are more general. These particular points, lead to an apprehension of bias on the part of the applicants and may well have led to the grievance at hand. Due to the untimely demise of Mr. Watson there indeed was no other member of management who had more contact with the grievo~ than Mr. Lewis or Mr. Graham. This fact in itself cried~/out the need for questions pertaining to technical exper t~se. ]'his member too fiends the process without discrimination or bias, butt can well understand the grievor~s apprehension of same. One further comment going to the interview itself; the questions asked in the interview and the scores assigned were loosely correlated in the extreme. It was quite obvious that greater care should be taken in advance of an interview to formulate questions and prepare guidelines to assist the panel members in scoring. By in large, this member feels the proper candidate was awarded the job more by good luck than good management.