HomeMy WebLinkAboutBoswell 13-01-081
IN THE MATTER OF AN ARBITRATION
BETWEEN:
Fanshawe College of Applied Arts and Technology
(“theCollege”)
-and-
Ontario Public Service Employees Union, Local 110
(“OPSEU ”)
WORKLOAD COMPLAINT OF JENNIFER BOSWELL
Sole Arbitrator Patrick Kelly
Appearances
For OPSEU: Darryl Bedford, President
Jennifer Boswell, Professor
Darren Chapman, Chief Steward
Kathryn Tamasi, First Vice President
For the College: Robert J. Atkinson, Counsel
David Belford, Dean, Faculty of Business
Susan Cluett, Dean, Centre for Community Education and Training
Services
Jeff Finley, Labour Relations Officer
Jeff Low, Director, Employee Relations
Helen Pearce, Chair, School of Design
This proceeding was held at London on December 20, 2012.
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AWARD
1. This is a workload dispute between the College and OPSEU pursuant to Article 11 of the
Academic Employees Collective Agreement between the College Employer Council for
the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology and Ontario Public Service Employees
Union (“the collective agreement”). It concerns a referral of a workload assignment by
Jennifer Boswell under article 11.02 E 1 of the collective agreement.
2. Ms. Boswell is a member of a joint committee known as the Workload Monitoring Group
(“the WMG”). The WMG is an eight-person committee consisting of equal numbers of
management and OPSEU members. Its membership, functions, duties and authority are
set out in the collective agreement. This dispute concerns the College’s determination
that, in the 2012 fall term, Ms. Boswell’s workload assignment (and, for that matter, the
workload assignment of each of her OPSEU colleagues on the WMG) would include one
paid hour per week to perform her work on the WMG. In prior terms Ms. Boswell and
her committee colleagues were each allotted five hours per week to perform WMG
functions. The College’s rationale for reducing the OPSEU committee members’ paid
WMG time from five hours to one hour is that the College is of the view that a great deal
of their activities are not within the WMG’s mandate.
3. The Standard Workload Form (“the SWF") records a great deal of detail concerning the
assignment of professor workloads, including the courses to be taught, the number of
students in the courses, the number of hours of classroom teaching (contact hours),
preparation time, and student evaluation and feedback that the professor will be expected
to deliver or incur during the semester. The SWF also includes an allotment for
complementary functions, things that professors do aside from teaching, preparing to
teach and evaluating their students. Complementary functions cover such activities as
Department meetings, working with colleagues to ensure a consistent curriculum, union
business (for those professors who are union representatives), and, for those who are
members of the WMG, their WMG activities.
4. The SWF for each professor is prepared by the College months in advance of the
applicable academic term. The College’s Program Manager and a data entry clerk
complete this task, which largely involves rolling over previous SWF information into
the new SWF. Once the data is entered, a computer program performs the calculations
necessary to determine the total hours of the assignment. Next, the Department Head (the
professor’s supervisor) goes over the SWF with the professor. Sometimes the professor
may point out errors, sometimes further checks have to be conducted to verify the
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information on the SWF, but eventually the professor either agrees with the SWF and
signs off (in the vast majority of cases) or indicates on the SWF that he or she wishes to
refer any dispute to the WMG, and if necessary, to arbitration (articles 11.02A 1, 11.02A
3, 11.02A 4 and 11.02A 6).
5. There are approximately 450 full-time teaching faculty employed by the College. Each
professor will generate at least one SWF per term, and many will generate multiple SWFs
per term. Over the last 11 years, the number of SWFs produced annually has risen from
1749 in the 2000-2001 academic year to 2817 in 2010-2011. The sharpest increase was
between the 2009-2010 academic year to the 2010-2011 academic year when the number
of SWFs increased by slightly more than 600 from one year to the next. However, there
has not been a correspondingly sharp incline in referrals of workplace complaints in the
calendar years 2008 to 2011. There were 19 such referrals in 2008, 15 in 2009, only four
in 2010, and 10 in 2011. On average there were about 1.2 referrals to the WMG per
month between 2008 and 2011. A few years ago, most likely at some point between
2002 and 2005, the WMG meetings were reduced in frequency from weekly to bi-weekly
meetings.
6. In April 2012, a College representative informed OPSEU’s Co-Chair on the WMG that
for the upcoming SWF period commencing in the fall, the complementary time for all
faculty members of the WMG would be reduced to one hour per week. A formal written
notice issued on May 29, 2012. In addition to confirming the reduction in the WMG
hours, the written notice also stated that there would be only two regular WMG meetings
per academic term (as opposed to the ad hoc meetings to deal with specific workload
referrals), rather than regular bi-weekly meetings.
7. The College contends that Ms. Boswell and her colleagues on the WMG are engaged in
activities that do not square with its mandate. Before examining in more detail the
College’s rationale and considering the nature of Ms. Boswell’s activity as a member of
the WMG, it is useful to reproduce the provisions of the collective agreement that spell
out the WMG’s functions. These are described at article 11.02 C 1:
The functions of the WMG shall include:
(i) reviewing workload assignments in general at the College and resolving
apparent inequitable assignments;
(ii) reviewing specific disputes pursuant to 11.02 A 4 and/or 11.02 A 6 (a) and
where possible resolving such disputes;
(iii) making recommendations to the College on the operation of workload
assignments at the College;
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(iv) reviewing individual workload assignments where requested by the teacher
or the Union Local and, where possible, resolving the disputes;
(v) making recommendations to the College and Union Local committees
appointed under Article 7, Union/College Committee (Local), as to amendments
or additions to the provisions governing workload assignments at the College for
local negotiation in accordance with 11.02 G in order to address particular
workload needs at the College.
8. Also worth reproducing is article 11.02 C 2, which describes the sorts of things the WMG
must consider in the course of its deliberations. It reads:
The WMG shall in its consideration have regard to such variables affecting
assignments as:
(i) nature of subjects to be taught;
(ii) level of teaching and experience of the teacher and availability of
technical and other resource assistance;
(iii) size and amenity of classroom, laboratory or other teaching/learning
facility;
(iv) numbers of students in class;
(v) instructional modes;
(vi) availability of time for the teacher's professional development;
(vii) previously assigned schedules;
(viii) lead time for preparation of new and/or changed schedules;
(ix) availability of current curriculum;
(x) students with special needs;
(xi) introduction of new technology;
(xii) the timetabling of workload;
(xiii) level of complexity and rate of change in curriculum;
(xiv) requirements for applied research;
(xv) required translation of materials.
9. Finally, article 11.02 D 2 provides that the WMG “shall have access to all completed
SWFs and such other relevant workload data as it requires to review workload complaints
at the College.”
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10. Ms. Boswell explained how her OPSEU colleagues on the WMG approach their work.
They divide up all the SWFs between them and review each one, whether or not the SWF
has been signed off as agreed by the professor. (Apparently, at one time, all members of
the WMG, including management representatives reviewed SWFs, but that work has
since been undertaken only by the OPSEU representatives.) Ms. Boswell utilizes a fine-
tooth comb approach to the SWF review process. She looks for what she and OPSEU
consider to be errors, such as the assignment of overtime in a SWF belonging to a
probationary employee. Probationary employees are not allowed to be assigned
overtime. Ms. Boswell may also compare the SWF to course information sheets and
course timetables for the purpose of determining if, for example, the type of evaluation
feedback indicated on the SWF lines up with the evaluation feedback type mentioned in
the corresponding course information sheet informing students as to how their
performance in the course will be evaluated. Ms. Boswell ensures that every SWF
reflects school and program meetings under complementary functions. Ms. Boswell will
even examine every SWF to ensure that the professor’s signature is in original ink.
11. The WMG SWF reviews are undertaken outside of the regularly scheduled WMG
meetings, which, as I have indicated, have been reduced in frequency from once a week,
to bi-weekly meetings, to, more recently, two meetings per school term, presumably at
the insistence of the College. In addition to SWF reviews, Ms. Boswell engages in many
other activities as a WMG member. She logged time in the 2012 fall term doing research
on specific workload referrals that came before the WMG, consulted and/or met with
other OPSEU members about workload issues that might potentially become actual
referrals, and so forth. Of the approximately 72 WMG hours she estimates she put in on
WMG-related business during the 2012 fall term, about 21 hours (by my calculations)
were taken up entirely on reviewing the SWFs.
12. The College does not think that reviewing SWFs for “correctness” (a concept whose
definition the College and OPSEU do not necessarily see eye to eye on) is a proper use of
the WMG’s time. The College maintains that the WMG ought to be looking for ways to
resolve workload disputes, rather than actually generating petty disputes by scanning
SWFs for clerical errors, particularly when most SWFs are agreed to as between the
professors and their supervisors. An allocation of five hours per week per WMG member
is, in the College’s view, excessive when one considers that the maximum number of
teaching contact hours for post-secondary professors is 18 in a week, and that Ms.
Boswell’s contact hours in the fall term were only five per week.
13. OPSEU’s response is that it is the exclusive bargaining agent, and that SWFs are not
merely items of individual negotiation between individuals. In OPSEU’s view, the
WMG has an obligation to vet the SWFs as a whole because the individual professors
will not know whether their workloads have been consistently and fairly determined in
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comparison to other professors. This, OPSEU submits, takes a great deal of effort that
goes beyond the scope of a relatively short WMG meeting twice a term. In any event,
OPSEU argues, the mandate of the WMG goes well beyond reviewing the few workload
referrals that arise in an academic year. In that regard, OPSEU refers to the five stated
functions of the WMG in article 11.02 C 1. That list of functions is clearly not
exhaustive, and only one of the stated functions is to review specific workload dispute
referrals.
14. Both parties make valid points. However, in my view, the College has not made a
sufficiently persuasive case for reducing Ms. Boswell’s complementary functions for
WMG work by 80 per cent. I note that the collective agreement provisions require that
the WMG have access to all completed SWFs, whether agreed or not (article 11.02 D 2),
and further, that one of the functions of the WMG is to review workload assignments “in
general” for the purpose of determining the equitability of assignments (article 11.02 c
1(i)). Reviewing workload assignments “in general” implies that the WMG will review
the SWFs in their totality in order to draw conclusions about the equitability of the
assignments in general. Monitoring the SWFs is part of the WMG’s work. (On the other
hand, checking the colour of the ink of a signature on a SWF goes beyond the functions
of the WMG.)
15. The College took the position that one hour a week for WMG work was sufficient. Its
view was based on the opinions of certain of the management members of the WMG that
the OPSEU members were spending inordinate time on detailed SWF reviews. That is
not a sufficiently compelling rationale for an 80 per cent reduction for Ms. Boswell,
particularly where it would appear that her SWF review work in the fall term comprised
about 30 per cent of all her WMG activity. Furthermore, the College has allotted five
hours of complementary functions for OPSEU members of WMG for a very long period
of time. Any reduction, in my view, to Ms. Boswell’s allotted hours in respect of WMG
activity should be made only on the clearest of evidence that what she has been doing
falls outside the scope of the broad functions of the WMG described in article 11.02 C 1.
Finally, I reject any suggestion by the College that Ms. Boswell’s WMG activity is
disproportionate in relation to her teaching contact hours. In my view, there is no
correlation between the two, and I ought not to take into account the number of Ms.
Boswell’s teaching contact hours for the purpose of determining what is a reasonable
number of paid hours to attribute to the WMG activity. Five hours of WMG time for an
OPSEU representative was what the employer thought to be reasonable for an extended
period. No satisfactory case has been made for reducing that period. On the contrary, the
evidence supports the conclusion that five hours per week continues to be a reasonable
assessment of Ms. Bowell’s necessary SWF work.
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16. For these reasons, I find that Ms. Boswell’s SWF for the fall term should be amended to
reflect five hours of complementary functions in respect of her WMG work.
____________________________________
Patrick Kelly
Workload Resolution Arbitrator
January 8, 2013