TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 1999

Senate approves merit-pay panel

By John Putman

On-Line Forty-Niner

Responding to an executive order by California State University Chancellor Charles Reed imposing conditions of employment, the Cal State Long Beach Academic Senate is trying to ensure that faculty have a say in evaluating the performance of their peers.

To that end, the Senate voted Thursday to create a merit-pay grievance committee consisting of full-time faculty members.

All such faculty would serve as a pool from which a grievance committee could be drawn to hear another faculty member's merit pay appeal.

Due to the absence of a grievance procedure under the CSU's imposed conditions, the executive order cited the need for individual campuses to establish their own grievance panels. Because of the lack of a collective bargaining agreement between the CSU and California Faculty Association, there is currently no grievance procedure in place, Senate Chairman Simeon Crowther said.

The Senate recommended full-time faculty, including athletic coaches, librarians and counselors, serve on the board. An amendment by Zuhar Anwar, CSULB professor of physics and astronomy, to allow only tenured faculty to serve on the panel, failed decisively.

The action comes as the Senate scrambles to establish faculty merit pay procedures by a May 1 deadline. Under the CSU's imposed conditions of employment, faculty merit pay submissions would be decided at the administrative level.

At a special April 12 meeting devoted exclusively to the issue, the Senate voted to submit the merit pay increase policy to all faculty members for ratification. For-and-against arguments and an overview of the policy were distributed to faculty along with the policy.

This was suggested by Wayne Dick, chairman of the Faculty Personnel Policies Council, which drafted the policy, because the issue has proven so controversial. All ballots must be returned Friday by noon.

Inflaming the controversy over the Senate's decision to draft a merit pay policy is the fact that the statewide Academic Senate passed a resolution March 12 urging campus senates to "refrain from developing criteria, standards, procedures or structures related to the implementation of any imposed terms and conditions of employment."

The CSULB Senate is the only campus senate to go against the resolution, said Eugene Ruyle, professor of anthropology, while at least seven campus senates have endorsed the statewide resolution.

Senate members endorsing the merit pay policy draft have repeatedly voiced their intention that faculty not be deprived of a voice in the process under the CSU's imposed conditions.