Saturday, July 02, 2016
The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Wait...
The sky fell? Eh, maybe.
I've been wanted to post something for around two months now, and each entry would have been covered some radical shift in my circumstance and my crowing about how right I was and how complacent everyone else was to their detriment, but no matter what I heard, nothing really changed to anything close to the extent I thought it would, so any post I wrote would look stupid in retrospect, and by that I mean 3 or 4 days after I heard the rumors. Nevertheless, a brief review of what's been transpiring or not, as the case may be be, does have some instructive value. Let's go through the list and rate the truth using the Truth-o-meter from the excellent website: http://www.politifact.com. I'll another qualifier to the ratings, this time from Work the System: 95% is perfect, so anything rated as True will still have a rare exception now and then. This isn't a consistent parsing of veracity, so a half-true rating shouldn't be read as true half the time, but it was in the ballpark, or some things were exaggerated, and so on up and down the scale.
First is the idea that our contract will finally be signed by October. Rating: Mostly False, bordering on Half-True. While there has been some progress in the tenor of negotiations (a minor miracle in its own right), and some of the smaller items have been agreed upon, the big ones have had only the barest of discussion. The general framework is there, and I certainly hope it gets done. Not all the news is good. We will have to pay for health care, though it doesn't hurt me that much, since I'm single and have no children. Still, if we get the raises I believe we will, it will go a long way to blunting the impact of what's covered next.
Second is the news that all overtime has been eliminated for counselors. Rating: Mostly True. The reason I didn't immediately write an overwrought post on this is because I kept getting mixed signals, but it has since been confirmed. This news was discussed at our most recent division meeting, and one of the primary reasons academic counselors are hopping mad, and as of this morning (06/30/16) financial aid counselors are mildly depressed. I believed my office was going to receive OT during mass registration, but alas no. I've predicted change this for a while now, though it still stung when I heard it. Still, the reason I consider it a mostly true is that the policy may be time-limited, and resulted primarily because the academic counselors' office blew through the adjunct money like Hunter S. Thompson on a drug binge in Las Vegas, and our declining enrollment resulted in a much tighter than expected budget overall, which is itself unprecedented. The college's army of part time counselors earning $75,000 a year for 29 hours a week turned out to be an expensive luxury. Financial aid doesn't have any of these relief staffers, thankfully. Also, not all overtime has been officially eliminated, as all counselors working at the off-campus sites still get extra pay - at least for now. Why? It comes out of a different budget which still has money in it. This loophole has led to some truly disgraceful behavior from the senior (in more than one way) advisors. I'll delve into that below.
Needless to say, this hurts, especially if my trips to Ossining don't yield extra money. If the worst case scenario holds true, I just took a $16,000 pay cut. Of course, we never should have assumed we'd always be getting overtime, but after you've gotten it for as long as we have, you take it for granted. Right now I can only wait, hope, and chastise myself.
Next up is the notion that counselors would now have to stagger their schedules. Rating: True, obviously, since I've been doing it since October 4th, 2001, but this application of the policy has little to do with my office. This applies to the other counseling offices, who now have arrive at work at 11am possibly, working until 7:30pm as an example, or 10am to 7pm, etc. This dovetails with eliminating overtime, because the college still needs to insure coverage in the evenings. It's important to note that the contract allowed the college to do this at any time, so this change was inevitable, but never exercised that right until now. It makes me wonder what else in lurking in that document.
The only way this affects me is that financial aid staffers will also need to come in at 11am Monday through Thursday, at least during August and September. I have seniority, so I called Monday. I'm only half-joking. I did reserve Monday, but only because I've been coming in late on Thursdays since I got hired. The real question is whether or not financial aid will be open late 4 days a week year-round. That's probable, and academic counseling already is. If so, late arrivals on Monday will be a permanent fixture of my schedule.
Before I cover the big news/rumor/idle speculation, I should mention the terrible behavior displayed by my colleagues. First, it must be noted that salaries at the college vary wildly, and someone can make $145K while working next to someone making $53K, and both people are doing the exact same job. Bureaucracies reward longevity more than anything else, and we are no exception. Unionized workplaces only amplify that phenomenon. It really didn't matter much when overtime was plentiful. Newer counselors may not have gotten the choicest locations or times, but the extra money was always there. Now that the college has restricted that monetary flow, those with seniority have shoved the new people to the side. Thankfully, that hasn't happened in my office, but I could pull rank and take all the OT for myself. That would be next-level shitty, but I could do it. And yes, that means I am the most senior financial aid advisor. When the hell did that happen? Anyway, as implied above, this pecking order also applies to scheduling overall, so I could come in at 11am every day, or 8am every day, or 9am if it's available, etc. This scares the new people more than the lost overtime, as they may find themselves working late every night with no recourse, no extra compensation, and no end in sight.
Needless to say, watching pampered, spoiled, and way overpaid counselors who should have retired a decade ago take money away from co-workers who really need the extra money is revolting. Yes, it's legal, but I still can't stomach it. Worse still, taking a stand is pointless, since a senior counselor could refuse the overtime, but a less senior counselor (also suddenly SOL) would pick up the overtime well before the junior faculty even sniffed it. It's sad.
The big rumor, the one that had me shouting from the mountaintops, was the rumor that all financial aid counseling jobs would be eliminated and replaced by "Grade 10's," (translation: technicians or "coaches" [gag] that are strictly County employees who make much lower salaries), while the financial aid advisors would be transferred to regular counseling. Rating: Patently and Utterly False.
Of all the rumors floating around campus, this was the one that would send me into a tizzy. Much like the investigation into Anya's love life, I received this info on a late Thursday afternoon, and no one was available to confirm or deny the rumor. Naturally, I obsessed about this all weekend, planning a long post, fretting about my new job, knowing where I stood in the line for overtime (far enough in the back as to never get any), etc. So what came of it? Nothing. I told this to my boss, and she laughed. I just shrugged my shoulders, then went back to work. I didn't rate this with a "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire" for two reasons: 1) there is a possibility that I may have to learn how to be an academic counselor in the near future, and this was demonstrated yesterday when my Dean came in to see if I could help out on an emergency basis, as a new student function was overwhelmed. I couldn't. Some degree of cross-training has been suggested for a while now, though the thought of amateurs dispensing financial aid advice terrifies me, and 2) it is possible this or something like it was suggested in passing by the higher ups, and dismissed as the incredibly stupid idea it is, or not worth the fight with the union, or not feasible until my Director retires in two years (yikes!), but the rumor started and spread nonetheless.
Of the four changes above, only the last one warranted a posting on own, and I would have written it if life had not gotten in the way. Thankfully, I don't have to read a post so apart from reality as to make me cringe. Truth and consequences aside, there is an undercurrent of unhappiness running through the college like an underground river, never seen and rarely heard, but eroding the foundations of collegiality and professionalism all the while. It's hurting the employees and by extension the students, but I'm not sure the Administration cares all that much. It's the price of doing business, of making the changes required by the SUNY Board of Trustees and Middle States Accreditation. No matter what the costs to the staff, where else would we go? I've often said this is the best financial aid counseling job available anywhere, period. This is still the case, even with the changes. I'd never have close to the pay, benefits, perquisites, status, or vacation at any other college, and everyone knows it from our President to the student workers. The college can do whatever it wants because it can afford to do so. A new contract will lessen the pain, especially for the newer counselors who don't make that much money, relatively speaking. Then again, the cost of health care could be so onerous as to destroy what's left of our morale. Either way were stuck, right? Right? Well, maybe.
I've been wanted to post something for around two months now, and each entry would have been covered some radical shift in my circumstance and my crowing about how right I was and how complacent everyone else was to their detriment, but no matter what I heard, nothing really changed to anything close to the extent I thought it would, so any post I wrote would look stupid in retrospect, and by that I mean 3 or 4 days after I heard the rumors. Nevertheless, a brief review of what's been transpiring or not, as the case may be be, does have some instructive value. Let's go through the list and rate the truth using the Truth-o-meter from the excellent website: http://www.politifact.com. I'll another qualifier to the ratings, this time from Work the System: 95% is perfect, so anything rated as True will still have a rare exception now and then. This isn't a consistent parsing of veracity, so a half-true rating shouldn't be read as true half the time, but it was in the ballpark, or some things were exaggerated, and so on up and down the scale.
First is the idea that our contract will finally be signed by October. Rating: Mostly False, bordering on Half-True. While there has been some progress in the tenor of negotiations (a minor miracle in its own right), and some of the smaller items have been agreed upon, the big ones have had only the barest of discussion. The general framework is there, and I certainly hope it gets done. Not all the news is good. We will have to pay for health care, though it doesn't hurt me that much, since I'm single and have no children. Still, if we get the raises I believe we will, it will go a long way to blunting the impact of what's covered next.
Second is the news that all overtime has been eliminated for counselors. Rating: Mostly True. The reason I didn't immediately write an overwrought post on this is because I kept getting mixed signals, but it has since been confirmed. This news was discussed at our most recent division meeting, and one of the primary reasons academic counselors are hopping mad, and as of this morning (06/30/16) financial aid counselors are mildly depressed. I believed my office was going to receive OT during mass registration, but alas no. I've predicted change this for a while now, though it still stung when I heard it. Still, the reason I consider it a mostly true is that the policy may be time-limited, and resulted primarily because the academic counselors' office blew through the adjunct money like Hunter S. Thompson on a drug binge in Las Vegas, and our declining enrollment resulted in a much tighter than expected budget overall, which is itself unprecedented. The college's army of part time counselors earning $75,000 a year for 29 hours a week turned out to be an expensive luxury. Financial aid doesn't have any of these relief staffers, thankfully. Also, not all overtime has been officially eliminated, as all counselors working at the off-campus sites still get extra pay - at least for now. Why? It comes out of a different budget which still has money in it. This loophole has led to some truly disgraceful behavior from the senior (in more than one way) advisors. I'll delve into that below.
Needless to say, this hurts, especially if my trips to Ossining don't yield extra money. If the worst case scenario holds true, I just took a $16,000 pay cut. Of course, we never should have assumed we'd always be getting overtime, but after you've gotten it for as long as we have, you take it for granted. Right now I can only wait, hope, and chastise myself.
Next up is the notion that counselors would now have to stagger their schedules. Rating: True, obviously, since I've been doing it since October 4th, 2001, but this application of the policy has little to do with my office. This applies to the other counseling offices, who now have arrive at work at 11am possibly, working until 7:30pm as an example, or 10am to 7pm, etc. This dovetails with eliminating overtime, because the college still needs to insure coverage in the evenings. It's important to note that the contract allowed the college to do this at any time, so this change was inevitable, but never exercised that right until now. It makes me wonder what else in lurking in that document.
The only way this affects me is that financial aid staffers will also need to come in at 11am Monday through Thursday, at least during August and September. I have seniority, so I called Monday. I'm only half-joking. I did reserve Monday, but only because I've been coming in late on Thursdays since I got hired. The real question is whether or not financial aid will be open late 4 days a week year-round. That's probable, and academic counseling already is. If so, late arrivals on Monday will be a permanent fixture of my schedule.
Before I cover the big news/rumor/idle speculation, I should mention the terrible behavior displayed by my colleagues. First, it must be noted that salaries at the college vary wildly, and someone can make $145K while working next to someone making $53K, and both people are doing the exact same job. Bureaucracies reward longevity more than anything else, and we are no exception. Unionized workplaces only amplify that phenomenon. It really didn't matter much when overtime was plentiful. Newer counselors may not have gotten the choicest locations or times, but the extra money was always there. Now that the college has restricted that monetary flow, those with seniority have shoved the new people to the side. Thankfully, that hasn't happened in my office, but I could pull rank and take all the OT for myself. That would be next-level shitty, but I could do it. And yes, that means I am the most senior financial aid advisor. When the hell did that happen? Anyway, as implied above, this pecking order also applies to scheduling overall, so I could come in at 11am every day, or 8am every day, or 9am if it's available, etc. This scares the new people more than the lost overtime, as they may find themselves working late every night with no recourse, no extra compensation, and no end in sight.
Needless to say, watching pampered, spoiled, and way overpaid counselors who should have retired a decade ago take money away from co-workers who really need the extra money is revolting. Yes, it's legal, but I still can't stomach it. Worse still, taking a stand is pointless, since a senior counselor could refuse the overtime, but a less senior counselor (also suddenly SOL) would pick up the overtime well before the junior faculty even sniffed it. It's sad.
The big rumor, the one that had me shouting from the mountaintops, was the rumor that all financial aid counseling jobs would be eliminated and replaced by "Grade 10's," (translation: technicians or "coaches" [gag] that are strictly County employees who make much lower salaries), while the financial aid advisors would be transferred to regular counseling. Rating: Patently and Utterly False.
Of all the rumors floating around campus, this was the one that would send me into a tizzy. Much like the investigation into Anya's love life, I received this info on a late Thursday afternoon, and no one was available to confirm or deny the rumor. Naturally, I obsessed about this all weekend, planning a long post, fretting about my new job, knowing where I stood in the line for overtime (far enough in the back as to never get any), etc. So what came of it? Nothing. I told this to my boss, and she laughed. I just shrugged my shoulders, then went back to work. I didn't rate this with a "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire" for two reasons: 1) there is a possibility that I may have to learn how to be an academic counselor in the near future, and this was demonstrated yesterday when my Dean came in to see if I could help out on an emergency basis, as a new student function was overwhelmed. I couldn't. Some degree of cross-training has been suggested for a while now, though the thought of amateurs dispensing financial aid advice terrifies me, and 2) it is possible this or something like it was suggested in passing by the higher ups, and dismissed as the incredibly stupid idea it is, or not worth the fight with the union, or not feasible until my Director retires in two years (yikes!), but the rumor started and spread nonetheless.
Of the four changes above, only the last one warranted a posting on own, and I would have written it if life had not gotten in the way. Thankfully, I don't have to read a post so apart from reality as to make me cringe. Truth and consequences aside, there is an undercurrent of unhappiness running through the college like an underground river, never seen and rarely heard, but eroding the foundations of collegiality and professionalism all the while. It's hurting the employees and by extension the students, but I'm not sure the Administration cares all that much. It's the price of doing business, of making the changes required by the SUNY Board of Trustees and Middle States Accreditation. No matter what the costs to the staff, where else would we go? I've often said this is the best financial aid counseling job available anywhere, period. This is still the case, even with the changes. I'd never have close to the pay, benefits, perquisites, status, or vacation at any other college, and everyone knows it from our President to the student workers. The college can do whatever it wants because it can afford to do so. A new contract will lessen the pain, especially for the newer counselors who don't make that much money, relatively speaking. Then again, the cost of health care could be so onerous as to destroy what's left of our morale. Either way were stuck, right? Right? Well, maybe.
