CAUSE ADVISORY
Regarding PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
CAUSE Wins an Important Legal Victory!
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Greetings CAUSE Members, District Employees, and Community Members,
The Union Wins an Important Legal Victory !
Recently, CUSD’s employee Union, CAUSE, won a significant legal decision by a neutral state (of California) arbitrator; see attached. Not only did the Union win the legal action, but the arbitrator affirmed the Union’s position on every point the Union charged. As a result, CUSD must arbitrate upon its extensive CLASSIFIED EVALUATION violations.
Background:
After many attempts to resolve this issue informally, the Union submitted a formal grievance in Autumn of 2019. When the District failed to recognize and respond to the grievance, the Union continued to process it through to the arbitration step, which provide the parties a contractual opportunity for an external third party (working with the State of California, CMCS & the Public Employee Relations Board / PERB) to both review the merits of the Union’s grievance and direct Superintendent Rigby & the CUSD to respond; as was their legal obligation. [ If you would like to review the extensive effort associated with the grievance process provided, see ARTICLE 4 * Grievance Procedures * CLASSIFIED Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) ]
http://cause2216.org/wp-content/uploads/CAUSE-CUSD-CLASSIFIED-AGREEMENT-2018-19.pdf
Although both Superintendent Rigby and District leadership spent the last two years, and considerable public-monies, trying to avoid, delay, and obstruct this arbitration, the sheer determination and tenacity of Union leadership has secured a pathway to resolve the harm and conditions created by the District. In the arbitrator’s recent decision (follow link: http://cause2216.org/wp-content/uploads/2021.10.26.Arbitrator-Ruling-on-Procedural-Arbitrability778041.1.pdf ), she recognized the delays and obstruction engaged in by the District. As a result, an arbitration hearing on the merits of the grievance is now set November 29th and Nov. 30th, 2021, here at the CUSD District Office.
At the upcoming hearing, a State designated arbitrator will examine three specific violations engaged in by the District:
1.) The District’s failure to provide and/or complete required annual performance evaluations of CLASSIFIED employees.
2.) The District failed to use the agreed upon evaluation [CEPA] form for evaluations, as designated and provided in the CBA * Article 10.
3.) In some cases where performance evaluations were completed, the District played “Gotcha’!” and rated CLASSIFIED employee as “not effective” without following contractual expectations cited in Article 10.1; including…
(A) the failure to provide prior written notice of the performance issues
(B) and/ or the failure to provide specific directives for improvement when performance failures were documented
(C) and/or the failure to provide specific assistance/training better support the employee’s performance
(D) and/or the failure to provide employees with a reasonable time frame for improvement and/or feedback meetings.
Moving forward * Have you also been impacted? :
CAUSE Leadership will continue to pursue the second phase of this legal victory; the upcoming formal hearings with the neutral arbitrator.
That said, and although the Union has already secured several CLASSIFIED employees to testify to the conditions (1-3) listed above, we are aware that many other CLASSIFIED employees (i.e. support staff) have been subjected to similar evaluation experiences. If you have also been impacted by these conditions, please contact us immediately. It is the Union’s goal to resolve any CUSD evaluation violation experienced by District employees, but we can’t advocate for you if we aren’t aware of your specific experience. If you are unsure if your evaluation processes have been conducted correctly under the contract, we’d be happy to review your experience and confirm one way or another.
In Solidarity,
CAUSE Leadership
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* C.A.U.S.E. – Yes We Can ! *
Feel free to visit our CAUSE website:
Your feedback and interest are appreciated!