Friday, February 28, 2020
The state of financial aid part 3, or...
The golden handcuffs are starting to pinch.
Please read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Meandering down the path from the general to the specific, the last aspect of financial aid to be covered is the college. I've made many predictions throughout this space, but the recurring thread was always this: my salary, vacation, health care, status as a faculty member, etc., are all well beyond what I would get at other schools, and that the school would do everything it could to take away at least some of these things. Theses changes would have to be negotiated, but eventually the college would put its foot down and attain these concessions by setting the teachers, librarians, academic support coordinators, etc. against the counselors. We're a sizable percentage of the bargaining unit, but not so large we can't be outvoted when approving a contract. I also speculated that some of the impetus for this would come from the County, and some would be internal to the school. I further speculated that the college would fight a war of attrition, reducing or eliminating overtime, not replacing people who retire, etc. While my guesses about the school trying taking away all our perks was, for the moment, mostly correct, I was spot on about the attrition. If anything, I was too optimistic.
First, I was wrong about the County spearheading our negotiations. They're involved, of course, but any of the outsized demands are not coming from White Plains. If there's an outside force driving what the college wants, it's from higher up the food chain. I do have suspicions about greater agendas in play, but the County government is now exclusively labor friendly, to the point the tax cap allows. On the other hand, it doesn't seem White Plains is helping us either.
Second, my overall prediction about the college taking away anything was poorly worded. What I should have said is that the college would actually get serious about the union negotiations, and then we would lose these things. Reducing our vacation, getting us to pay for healthcare, etc., have been sought by the college long before I was hired, but the reason I still called them predictions is that the faculty never really took these demands seriously, and I'm not sure the college did either. I was always more leery than my colleagues, but even I wasn't all that concerned. This has changed. Now the linchpin of getting a new contract is the counselors giving up 6 weeks or more of vacation, along with a substantial increase in everyone's contribution to our healthcare. The reasoning behind reducing our vacation is that this is how things worked 45 years ago, and they want that restored. It's nonsense, but that doesn't really matter; when a contract is up for negotiation, everything is on the table. To get these concessions, the administration is dangling a whopping 1% raise as compensation. The increase in our payroll deductions for insurance would be more than the raise, so all of this is a nonstarter. Furthermore, not only aren't there any other bribes for the teachers, the college is also demanding the teachers have more office time, teach more hours, and participate in advising. While I don't believe the demands are mere posturing, the strategy is lacking. We have had contentious negotiations in the past, but never have I seen such animosity. We have given a counter offer, which I wrote, stating that new hires get less vacation, but get more holidays, etc. I didn't actually believe we'd proffer it to the administration's negotiators, but thankfully they reacted as incredulously as we did to their offer. The two sides will joust and feint and meet again and again, both sides conceding small issues so we're seen as bargaining in good faith. Beyond that, we're at a stalemate, and thanks to two strange quirks in the law, my union is very happy about that.
The first reason we don't mind zero progress is the Taylor Act. It's a state law that covers civil servants in New York, most often referenced when public school teachers threaten to strike. Legally they can't, and this law is the reason. While preventing public sector workers from going on strike is probably the most important part of the law, there's another part that is also important: until a new contract is signed, the old one remains in effect. so while we can't take a negative job action, neither can the County. We're quite content to keep getting paid, taking our ample vacation, and paying smaller sums into our health insurance while the two sides butt heads. I may not be getting paid more, but I'm not losing anything either. I remarked to one of my clerks that the last contract we signed may be the last one I see, and that would be true for her union as well.
The second reason we're happy with the standstill is the Janus case. A boon to Republicans who hate civil servants (wait, does that mean I hate myself?), it prevents pubic workers from being required to join the union on any level. Prior to the decision, you would still be required to pay dues via agency fees, even if you didn't want to join the union itself, usually for religious reasons. While many were hoping that Janus would cause the death of public unions, that hasn't quite happened yet. One of the effects it has had is making the union work much harder for marginalized groups within the local. For our last contract, that was the adjunct faculty, who got a sick day, the opportunity to contribute to a retirement plan, etc. Although some of my fellow counselors were annoyed at the focus given to the adjuncts, I understood why the union fought so hard for that group. There's no longer a requirement that the adjuncts join the union, gain very little from their membership, and can't really afford the dues in the first place. We had to give them a reason to support us, and we did.
Just as the union had to give extra attention to the adjuncts, the leadership and negotiating team know that they need to fight for the counselors. The teachers are supporting us at the moment, but we cannot take that for granted. If the rest of the unit did betray us and then we all left the union en masse, it would cripple the unit. Moreover, it would still be legally required to defend us, though as our local's president always states at our meetings, the defense doesn't have to be good. News flash: that defense sucks now. The union needs us, and we need the union, but the power balance has shifted. It's not a 50/50 split, but we have an option that we didn't have before.
If nothing good is happening with our union negotiations, nothing bad is happening either, save for a general level of disrespect shown to the counselors. We can handle that, even as we feel insulted. The war of attrition is another matter. Here we have real-world stakes and consequences. First, the overtime was reduced. This began a while ago, and it caused friction amongst the counselors. The extra time is given on the basis of seniority, so the counselors who have been here the longest, and by extension make the most money, snapped up all the available overtime. This was always the policy, but there was enough overtime that everyone could get an extra night. That was no longer the case, and now the available overtime is even further reduced, resulting in even more uneven treatment and resentment.
Next came staggering our shifts, basically eliminating any overtime on campus outside of peak registration. Normally, we're all scheduled from 8-5, and if you worked in the evening, you got paid overtime. Now it's like when I was first hired: on the nights an office is open until 8, you would come to work at 11, get an hour for lunch, then work until the evening. Again, seniority is a factor, and the available slots are 8-5 or 10-7. Those with the most time all chose the 8-5 shift, insuring they get a good parking spot and get out at a decent hour. Our new people, younger and often with young kids, get stuck working late. It's an easier shift for the most part, but disruptive. All of this has caused further resentment in out ranks, and I can't help but wonder if that wasn't by design.
Finally, two major changes have been taking place very recently. One was that retirees were not being replaced at the same rate. If 3 people left, one full time counselor was hired and perhaps an adjunct was given an extra night. Also, each of the extension sites has an academic advisor who is an adjunct, and that means further reduced overtime and fewer new full time, tenure eligible hires. Does this hurt students? Absent any hard data, I'll rely on my intuition and say yes. I do know the academic advisors are very stressed as their caseloads increase and their take-home pay shrinks. The second change was one that shook everyone in the faculty to the core: a counselor didn't get tenure. Though the senior faculty make a big deal out of getting tenure, if only to justify both the stress we had suffered and the process itself, it's generally assumed you'll get it. Until now, the only two counselors who didn't get it either had major personal problems or was caught trolling for hookers in a County car while he was supposed to be at a high school. Never before has a counselor been denied tenure who was good at his job and didn't commit some major sin, like sleeping with a student. This time someone lost his job for purely personal reasons, and we're shocked and furious at all the relevant parties: the president, the dean, the union, even the employee himself for not playing the small political game well enough. If I had known what was happening, I could have stopped it, but I was unaware, so I'm also mad at myself. Until you get tenure, you're at-will, and can be fired without cause. In this case the rationale seems to be that he was inappropriate with students, and he was always considered extremely good looking to the point his looks crested the bell curve of maximum benefit and went hurtling downhill. All the female students wanted him, but there's no evidence he gave into temptation. We wanted to fight, and I told him to fight, but all he got was his salary until August 2020. An 8 month paid vacation is a decent consolation prize, but that's all it is. This was pure bullshit, and there was nothing anyone could do by the time the decision was made.
Ironically, most of these recent negative changes have not affected the financial aid office. Our staffing levels were reduced long ago, and more recently, we only lost a little overtime compared to other offices. We pay the bills, so cutting our budget any further is seen as counter productive. As for the other forms of attrition, we're somewhat immune - for now. It takes around 5 years to be good at this job, though I can help a neophyte become competent in around 2-3. Eventually our overtime and staffing levels will be reduced, but nothing like the academic advisors. I'm also happy to say that the internal strife hasn't hit the financial aid office either. We could be dicks and grab all the extra money for ourselves, but we work too closely together, and I don't believe we're that greedy anyway.
Reading and editing this post, I'm struck that while I say that I'm right about the war of attrition, it hasn't affected my office all that much, at least for now. Parts 1 and 2 are exclusively about financial aid, but this is more workplace observations than anything. It's financial aid because I'm a financial aid counselor. Regardless, it is time for the final entry in this series: tying everything together.
Please read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Meandering down the path from the general to the specific, the last aspect of financial aid to be covered is the college. I've made many predictions throughout this space, but the recurring thread was always this: my salary, vacation, health care, status as a faculty member, etc., are all well beyond what I would get at other schools, and that the school would do everything it could to take away at least some of these things. Theses changes would have to be negotiated, but eventually the college would put its foot down and attain these concessions by setting the teachers, librarians, academic support coordinators, etc. against the counselors. We're a sizable percentage of the bargaining unit, but not so large we can't be outvoted when approving a contract. I also speculated that some of the impetus for this would come from the County, and some would be internal to the school. I further speculated that the college would fight a war of attrition, reducing or eliminating overtime, not replacing people who retire, etc. While my guesses about the school trying taking away all our perks was, for the moment, mostly correct, I was spot on about the attrition. If anything, I was too optimistic.
First, I was wrong about the County spearheading our negotiations. They're involved, of course, but any of the outsized demands are not coming from White Plains. If there's an outside force driving what the college wants, it's from higher up the food chain. I do have suspicions about greater agendas in play, but the County government is now exclusively labor friendly, to the point the tax cap allows. On the other hand, it doesn't seem White Plains is helping us either.
Second, my overall prediction about the college taking away anything was poorly worded. What I should have said is that the college would actually get serious about the union negotiations, and then we would lose these things. Reducing our vacation, getting us to pay for healthcare, etc., have been sought by the college long before I was hired, but the reason I still called them predictions is that the faculty never really took these demands seriously, and I'm not sure the college did either. I was always more leery than my colleagues, but even I wasn't all that concerned. This has changed. Now the linchpin of getting a new contract is the counselors giving up 6 weeks or more of vacation, along with a substantial increase in everyone's contribution to our healthcare. The reasoning behind reducing our vacation is that this is how things worked 45 years ago, and they want that restored. It's nonsense, but that doesn't really matter; when a contract is up for negotiation, everything is on the table. To get these concessions, the administration is dangling a whopping 1% raise as compensation. The increase in our payroll deductions for insurance would be more than the raise, so all of this is a nonstarter. Furthermore, not only aren't there any other bribes for the teachers, the college is also demanding the teachers have more office time, teach more hours, and participate in advising. While I don't believe the demands are mere posturing, the strategy is lacking. We have had contentious negotiations in the past, but never have I seen such animosity. We have given a counter offer, which I wrote, stating that new hires get less vacation, but get more holidays, etc. I didn't actually believe we'd proffer it to the administration's negotiators, but thankfully they reacted as incredulously as we did to their offer. The two sides will joust and feint and meet again and again, both sides conceding small issues so we're seen as bargaining in good faith. Beyond that, we're at a stalemate, and thanks to two strange quirks in the law, my union is very happy about that.
The first reason we don't mind zero progress is the Taylor Act. It's a state law that covers civil servants in New York, most often referenced when public school teachers threaten to strike. Legally they can't, and this law is the reason. While preventing public sector workers from going on strike is probably the most important part of the law, there's another part that is also important: until a new contract is signed, the old one remains in effect. so while we can't take a negative job action, neither can the County. We're quite content to keep getting paid, taking our ample vacation, and paying smaller sums into our health insurance while the two sides butt heads. I may not be getting paid more, but I'm not losing anything either. I remarked to one of my clerks that the last contract we signed may be the last one I see, and that would be true for her union as well.
The second reason we're happy with the standstill is the Janus case. A boon to Republicans who hate civil servants (wait, does that mean I hate myself?), it prevents pubic workers from being required to join the union on any level. Prior to the decision, you would still be required to pay dues via agency fees, even if you didn't want to join the union itself, usually for religious reasons. While many were hoping that Janus would cause the death of public unions, that hasn't quite happened yet. One of the effects it has had is making the union work much harder for marginalized groups within the local. For our last contract, that was the adjunct faculty, who got a sick day, the opportunity to contribute to a retirement plan, etc. Although some of my fellow counselors were annoyed at the focus given to the adjuncts, I understood why the union fought so hard for that group. There's no longer a requirement that the adjuncts join the union, gain very little from their membership, and can't really afford the dues in the first place. We had to give them a reason to support us, and we did.
Just as the union had to give extra attention to the adjuncts, the leadership and negotiating team know that they need to fight for the counselors. The teachers are supporting us at the moment, but we cannot take that for granted. If the rest of the unit did betray us and then we all left the union en masse, it would cripple the unit. Moreover, it would still be legally required to defend us, though as our local's president always states at our meetings, the defense doesn't have to be good. News flash: that defense sucks now. The union needs us, and we need the union, but the power balance has shifted. It's not a 50/50 split, but we have an option that we didn't have before.
If nothing good is happening with our union negotiations, nothing bad is happening either, save for a general level of disrespect shown to the counselors. We can handle that, even as we feel insulted. The war of attrition is another matter. Here we have real-world stakes and consequences. First, the overtime was reduced. This began a while ago, and it caused friction amongst the counselors. The extra time is given on the basis of seniority, so the counselors who have been here the longest, and by extension make the most money, snapped up all the available overtime. This was always the policy, but there was enough overtime that everyone could get an extra night. That was no longer the case, and now the available overtime is even further reduced, resulting in even more uneven treatment and resentment.
Next came staggering our shifts, basically eliminating any overtime on campus outside of peak registration. Normally, we're all scheduled from 8-5, and if you worked in the evening, you got paid overtime. Now it's like when I was first hired: on the nights an office is open until 8, you would come to work at 11, get an hour for lunch, then work until the evening. Again, seniority is a factor, and the available slots are 8-5 or 10-7. Those with the most time all chose the 8-5 shift, insuring they get a good parking spot and get out at a decent hour. Our new people, younger and often with young kids, get stuck working late. It's an easier shift for the most part, but disruptive. All of this has caused further resentment in out ranks, and I can't help but wonder if that wasn't by design.
Finally, two major changes have been taking place very recently. One was that retirees were not being replaced at the same rate. If 3 people left, one full time counselor was hired and perhaps an adjunct was given an extra night. Also, each of the extension sites has an academic advisor who is an adjunct, and that means further reduced overtime and fewer new full time, tenure eligible hires. Does this hurt students? Absent any hard data, I'll rely on my intuition and say yes. I do know the academic advisors are very stressed as their caseloads increase and their take-home pay shrinks. The second change was one that shook everyone in the faculty to the core: a counselor didn't get tenure. Though the senior faculty make a big deal out of getting tenure, if only to justify both the stress we had suffered and the process itself, it's generally assumed you'll get it. Until now, the only two counselors who didn't get it either had major personal problems or was caught trolling for hookers in a County car while he was supposed to be at a high school. Never before has a counselor been denied tenure who was good at his job and didn't commit some major sin, like sleeping with a student. This time someone lost his job for purely personal reasons, and we're shocked and furious at all the relevant parties: the president, the dean, the union, even the employee himself for not playing the small political game well enough. If I had known what was happening, I could have stopped it, but I was unaware, so I'm also mad at myself. Until you get tenure, you're at-will, and can be fired without cause. In this case the rationale seems to be that he was inappropriate with students, and he was always considered extremely good looking to the point his looks crested the bell curve of maximum benefit and went hurtling downhill. All the female students wanted him, but there's no evidence he gave into temptation. We wanted to fight, and I told him to fight, but all he got was his salary until August 2020. An 8 month paid vacation is a decent consolation prize, but that's all it is. This was pure bullshit, and there was nothing anyone could do by the time the decision was made.
Ironically, most of these recent negative changes have not affected the financial aid office. Our staffing levels were reduced long ago, and more recently, we only lost a little overtime compared to other offices. We pay the bills, so cutting our budget any further is seen as counter productive. As for the other forms of attrition, we're somewhat immune - for now. It takes around 5 years to be good at this job, though I can help a neophyte become competent in around 2-3. Eventually our overtime and staffing levels will be reduced, but nothing like the academic advisors. I'm also happy to say that the internal strife hasn't hit the financial aid office either. We could be dicks and grab all the extra money for ourselves, but we work too closely together, and I don't believe we're that greedy anyway.
Reading and editing this post, I'm struck that while I say that I'm right about the war of attrition, it hasn't affected my office all that much, at least for now. Parts 1 and 2 are exclusively about financial aid, but this is more workplace observations than anything. It's financial aid because I'm a financial aid counselor. Regardless, it is time for the final entry in this series: tying everything together.
