Workload

• The contract specifies that “[a] maximum of 20 calculated clock hours of service per week is required of TA/RAs for a full-time appointment.” During negotiations, the administration repeatedly assured our negotiators that the term “calculated clock hours” meant actual hours of labor, as distinct from credit hours.
• The administration has unilaterally drafted workload guidelines (available here) that state that, for those TAs working as primary instructors, 1 credit hour of teaching entails 3.33 hours of work per week. For those TAs assisting primary instructors, their guidelines state that the ratio is 1 credit hour to 1.67 hours of work per week.
• The administration fought to insert their unilaterally drafted guidelines into the contract, but TUGSA refused. Our negotiators repeatedly told the administration that we did not accept their formulae and that we would not accept any agreement containing the guidelines. Only hours before an agreement was reached, the administration’s negotiators agreed to remove their guidelines from the contract language on workload. TUGSA has never agreed and will never agree to the administration’s guidelines.
• In the contract, the parties agree that the assignment of duties is a management right (i.e., not subject to negotiation or grievance), and that the university is free to unilaterally establish its own guidelines for assigning duties, without having to negotiate an agreement with TUGSA. Although TUGSA agreed that the guidelines were a matter of non-negotiable university policy, our negotiators did so with the clear understanding that no such policy superseded the contractual guarantee of a 20 hour per week maximum workload.
• Administrators have been recently circulating copies of their workload guidelines with TUGSA negotiator Arthur Hochner’s initials on them. Hochner initialed the document given to him with the explicit understanding that his initials only verified his receipt of the document, and not TUGSA’s agreement to the document. If administrators mean to imply that TUGSA signed off on the workload guidelines, their circulation of the initialed document is disingenuous.
• The contract establishes a special process by which workloads in excess of 20 hours may be contested. This process is separate from (and not subject to) the contract’s usual grievance and arbitration process. The workload review process is structured to allow for participation by faculty, the administration, graduate employees, and the union. If the employee is determined to have an excessive workload, the review process can implement remedies, including additional pay.
• The administration’s negotiators repeatedly assured our negotiators that, if an employee was assigned duties that required more than 20 hours per week of labor, that employee could receive relief under the workload review process, regardless of whether the duties assigned conformed to the administration’s workload guidelines. Thus, a TA whose assignments actually require 30 hours of service per week will be entitled to relief under the review process, even if the university guidelines specify that her assignments should theoretically require only 20 hours per week.

We have heard it reported that certain individuals have interpreted (or have been told to interpret) the contract as meaning that a 6 credit hour teaching load is appropriate, regardless of the actual amount of labor such a teaching load would require. Such was not the understanding our negotiators and the administration reached at the table. According to the agreement we reached, management’s unilaterally-determined guidelines do not supersede the agreed-upon 20 hour per week maximum, and the workload review process exists to challenge excessive workloads.

In the event that any employee’s workload exceeds twenty hours per week next academic year, we must be prepared to fight that abuse of the contract vigorously, both through the workload review process and all other means necessary.