Open Letter to Mr. Lavigna

Some brief context for this letter: The TAA membership voted to approve a document outlining the concerns over the HR Redesign. These concerns are shared by other campus unions and some parts of the faculty.  The Director of Human Resources, Robert Lavigna, wrote a letter to Bryan Kennedy, the president of our state federation, AFT-Wisconsin, detailing what Mr. Lavignia felt were inaccuracies in literature distributed to TAA and AFT-W members.  This letter responds to the specific issues in Mr. Lavignia’s letter.

September 13, 2012

Dear Mr. Lavigna,

Along with Bryan Kennedy and AFT-W, we have received your letter expressing concern over the HR FAQ released by AFT and republished by the TAA. First and foremost we want to ensure you that the TAA is committed to maintaining the long-standing relationship we have with your office and with the UW-Madison administration. The documents that were made available to you were originally drafted and shared not only among some TAA members and AFT employees, but also by a group of campus faculty and staff working together. Thus, they represent a collective concern that is not specific to graduate students or to the TAA. However, we also acknowledge that there was confusion and miscommunication between Kevin Walters, who is a TAA member and the official ASM representative to the Advisory Committee, the TAA, and the OHR regarding the release and circulation of these documents. This has led to an unfortunate situation that we would like to rectify and address briefly here, with the full desire to move forward with you in shaping the new HR system and engaging in a robust manner as the recommendations become campus policy. Due to the ongoing and often times nascent articulation and description of the project, we have attempted to inform members and respond to the process to the best of our abilities and oftentimes in conjunction with our parent institution, AFT-Wisconsin. While our goal was never to communicate inaccurate information, we do stand by most of the information provided by the FAQ sheet. We will defer to AFT-W to respond to your specific contentions with the FAQ document since they are its official authors, in particular the error regarding reclassification of employees outside the State system; but we would like to respond more generally to our stance as the TAA on some of the issues that document addresses.

We realize that much of the rationale behind the Human Resource Design project was and is well-intentioned and meant to further increase the high quality of education that already attracts students to UW-Madison. The workteam recommendations often reflected this intention and clearly stated the attempt to rethink UW policy from that shared perspective. As the graduate student union, and as students and educators ourselves, this is also one of our main concerns. We share the desire to create an environment that is most beneficial to students, faculty, and all campus employees that continues to establish UW-Madison as a remarkable institution. And we certainly acknowledge the efforts by your office to produce a caste free, diverse, and more equitable workplace.

Nonetheless, as a union there are valid concerns that we maintain regarding the process and details of the HR Design that we must continue to express, in the interest of our members and in the interest of contributing to a better culture and workplace here at the university. Although we discussed some of these during our most recent meeting on August 16, we are happy to reiterate those issues so that we may continue to discuss them.

• The transition to a merit pay system across campus would effectively create another caste system as a result of the immeasurable, ambiguous, and divisive standard of “merit.” Based both on the more immediate Critical Compensation Increase that is currently being implemented and the flexibility of merit compensation for employees, we are very concerned about the income gap that this could establish on campus, the hierarchy among employees and departments this could create, and the unbalanced emphasis that this might place on faculty research and publication over teaching and mentoring. Additionally, we are concerned that a merit pay system may increase gender and racial inequalities, disparity of compensation between tenured and non-tenured faculty, and a devaluation of certain fields in favor of others, as has occurred on other campuses with performance pay models for compensation.¹ Most directly, we are concerned with the arbitrary nature of merit pay and the weight that it gives to subjective assessment made by administration and managerial staff. As such, we have requested that employees have an active and ongoing role in articulating the standards of assessment. In general, however, we object to the implementation of the performance based system and 70/30% pay increase ratio that the Critical Compensation fund creates.
• In Bob Lavinga’s response to the critique of work team composition, he pointed out the fact that each work team had at least one member appointed by LMAC. While the TAA was pleased that several of its members, as well as those of other campus labor organizations, were able to contribute to the recommendations, the fact that these members constituted a significant minority marginalized the effectiveness of their participation. 75% of workteam representatives were acting in HR of administration were acting in HR or administrative positions; the 25% minority of other participants are, however, the large majority of employees on campus who will be affected by the new personnel system, and as such they should have comprised a larger percentage of the in order to achieve a truly participatory environment. Not only did these members constitute a voting minority, rendering their engagement inoperative, their lack of knowledge of human resource language and processes formed a significant barrier to meaningful participation. Student representatives have expressed dissatisfaction with the general “information imbalance” of workteams that were disproportionately influenced by outside consultants and experienced HR staff in a way that often made an explicit discussion of the principles motivating employment and higher education policy obsolete. In addition, according to the HR Design website’s description of the Advisory Committee, there is currently only one labor representative and one student representative among thirteen other members. To ensure our members’ meaningful participation going forward, we request not only a higher quantity of spots open to students and labor representatives on future work teams, but also opportunities for higher quality engagement. One suggestion is to provide training for work team members who have little or no prior experience in human resources; such orientation might enable work team members to feel more immediately able to participate in the process.
• On the issue of cost-of-living increases, we are concerned with the absence of a clear mechanism by which this would be calculated. We are also concerned that cost-of living is identified only as one factor amongst others for assessing compensation, and has been explicitly rejected in initial recommendations. The Compensation recommendation clearly states that a cost-of-living pay increase for all employees was rejected.² In place of such a model, the recommendation suggests that cost-of-living should be considered alongside of things like market, equity, and experience/qualifications. This leaves significant room for divergence across employee categories rather than guaranteeing a fair and livable wage for all. Furthermore, unspecified use of market standards could subject employees to pervasive inequities contained within the market, such as lower compensation of women and minorities.

Again, we look forward to continue working with the Office of Human Resources and the campus community on developing a strong and robust personnel system. We appreciate OHR’s commitment to maximizing campus community involvement and awareness about the HR Design. We certainly want to make sure our members are well informed about policies going forward, and appreciate the opportunity to dialogue in greater detail with you about the current recommendations, as well as to clarify our own positions.

We appreciate your offer to meet in person to discuss the specifics of the plan in more detail, and would like to schedule time to do so as soon as possible. In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact us with further questions and concerns about the points detailed in this letter.

Sincerely,

Matt Reiter and Charity Schmidt, Co-Presidents, TAA