WEDNESDAY, MAY 5, 1999

Faculty rejects merit-pay policy

By John Putman

On-Line Forty-Niner

A majority of Cal State Long Beach faculty just said "no" to a proposed merit-pay policy.

Dashing the hopes of the Academic Senate, CSULB faculty soundly rejected a merit-pay policy drafted by the Faculty Personnel Policies Council and ratified by the Senate in a 472-200 vote.

Ballots, which were counted by Senate officials Friday, were sent out to faculty along with a copy of the policy, an overview and pro-and-con arguments.

In the absence of a collective bargaining agreement between faculty and the Cal State University system, the Senate recommended that faculty approve the policy in order to give them a voice in the merit pay process.

"The faculty have spoken," Senate Chairman Simeon Crowther said. "[A majority] of members of the Senate wanted to have the views of all the faculty on this, and I think that's what they got."

Wayne Dick, chairman of the committee which drafted the policy, moved that the Senate submit the policy for faculty ratification.

"I'm very pleased that it went to a vote and the faculty was heard," Dick said. "I felt like there was so much potential for serious fractionalization to occur, that I thought it needed to go to a vote."

The Senate's approval of the policy was shrouded in controversy because some faculty resented an effort to tactfully cooperate with the CSU's implementation of conditions of employment, which occurred when contract negotiations between the CSU and California Faculty Association collapsed in mid-March.

The statewide Senates approved a resolution then that urged campus Senates not to develop policies within the guidelines of the CSU's imposed terms. CSULB would have been the only CSU to do so.

The CFA urged faculty to vote against the merit-pay policy.

"I think [the vote] is a comment on Chancellor [Charles] Reed," said CFA member Eugene Ruyle. "I think faculty understood the significance of this and rejected it."

Crowther said it is extremely difficult to determine why faculty voted the way they did but thinks it is mixed into the context of the dispute with the Chancellor's Office. He said voting "no" may simply have been a case in which people wanted to, in a sense, throw a stone at the CSU Trustees.

Under the CSU's imposed terms of employment, faculty merit-pay submissions, which were due Monday, will be progressively evaluated by the appropriate department chairman, college committee, college dean and, ultimately, CSULB President Robert Maxson.

The Senate committee's draft policy would have allowed for faculty evaluation at the department level, a responsibility that Dick thought may have intimidated some faculty. Dick suggested that because evaluations would occur during final exams week, some faculty thought they would not have enough time to carefully evaluate their peers.

"If you want to design a system that's going to deal with a delicate issue, and the issue of accountability is an important one, you don't want to just throw it together in two weeks," Dick said.

Dick said some faculty may have also voted against the policy because they thought evaluations should occur at the department or college level, but not at both.

Despite the merit-pay policy's defeat, Dick felt that the Senate had acted properly in drafting and submitting it to faculty for ratification.

"We did our jobs as members of the Senate by drafting a policy," he said. "I don't think it was our role necessarily to draw a line of protest at not drafting a policy. I think we presented the faculty with a good choice and they examined the feasibility of it and said 'no.'"

Crowther said this was the faculty's chance to say something.

"People on this campus feel quite remote from the decision-making in both the faculty union and the [CSU] Board of Trustees," Crowther said.