By SHANNON O. WELLS

In an effort to provide “relatively simple guidelines” for represented and non-representative faculty, “so they know how to approach a grievance,” members of the Senate Bylaws & Procedures Committee are reviewing the faculty union’s collective bargaining agreement for categories of grievances.

Volunteers are asked to “find key phrases” in the CBA “where something is prohibited” and list them by article with an eye to developing an information packet aimed at non-represented faculty.

“Most faculty aren’t intimately familiar with University policies and procedures,” noted committee Chair Nick Bircher at the committee’s April meeting.

This project, along with econsidering an update to address ad hoc committee formation, was discussed at Bylaws Committee meetings this spring, including on May 22, the final meeting of the 2025-26 academic year.

In a short presentation at the May meeting, Chair Nick Bircher, professor of nurse anesthesia in the School of Nursing, reiterated what he first explained in March, that committee volunteers review the current CBA, article by article, to develop potential categories of grievances.

Separate information packets are being developed for both represented and non-represented faculty to, as Bircher noted, help guide faculty through the CBA’s and University’s sometimes complex web of policies and procedures.

“One of the projects we undertook this academic year, which will move into next academic year, is to develop an informational packet for both represented faculty, that is, those who are part of the collective bargaining unit, and non-represented faculty, with respect to how to file a grievance,” he said.

“Because, as you would expect, the (CBA) is about 80 to 90 pages long, somewhere in there, and the assortment of grievances and the procedures that you have to go through are a little bit intricate.”

At the April meeting, Bircher said when you “root through all that stuff at the point that you already have a grievance, you're really pretty much behind the eight ball. And if you're a represented faculty, it is arguably a little bit worse, because the timelines in the (CBA) are pretty tight.

“That is, you have 30 days to file a grievance. I suspect that many of the people who are represented don't actually know there have been some grievances denied on a timeliness basis.”

The process for represented faculty is “far more simple” than procedures for the non-represented faculty, who must consider a “whole constellation of University policies” and determine if they have a grievance at all. “As we'll see next year when we focus more on the non-represented faculty, there are some things which are precluded for the non-represented faculty as grievances in the policies.”

For example, the AC 22 – Faculty Grievances policy is, he explained, a “pretty long list of things you can't grieve using the conventional union mechanism.”

The foundation of the assignment is “really a pretty primitive list of topics with some minimal citations,” he said of a OneDrive document made available to committee members. “For some of the other articles in the CBA, the actual procedure is governed by a University policy.”

The first phase of creating an index, will, Bircher said, make it “easier to kind of march through and select items that are potentially grieve-able. We want to frame the grievance as a violation of the collective bargaining agreement, and … everybody will have the opportunity to sign up for one or more articles to review and then submit a very small table for each article of things that can be grieved within that article.”

Bircher will assemble the main document, which includes articles already considered, represented visually as tables to provide some guidance to faculty members “as to what is agreeable” under the CBA. “… The majority of what we're going to be doing is from the collective bargaining agreement itself.

“To the extent that there are other policies referenced, we want to list those too, so that the potentially aggrieved faculty member will know exactly where to go,” he noted.

Relevant items include things “faculty might reasonably grieve” that aren’t listed as non-eligible for filing grievances.

“It's just essentially picking phrases out of either a University policy for non-represented faculty, or from a collective bargaining agreement for represented faculty,” he noted. “Or, if you have something that you are pretty sure should be grieve-able, but you can't find the language, then we should identify that topic.”

If a specific policy is referenced in the CBA as part of the grievance procedure, “that would be a secondary reference.”

The CBA includes an article for which each school or unit is supposed to develop its own workload policy. Not all have been completed, however, and some that have are “somewhat contentious,” Bircher explained. “But it's important to recognize that if a faculty member has to grieve an excessive workload assignment, they need to have access to the workload policy at the unit level.”

Responding to a comment about the need for grievance policy as the staff CBA is still developing, Bircher noted that “at some point when the staff CBA is completed, there will be a Grievance and Arbitration article on that, because that is mandatory under Pennsylvania state law,” he said. “So that will be the appropriate time to start developing that same set of tables, although the names of the articles may be slightly different in some cases.

“And for non-represented staff, I think there are a set of (Human Resources) policies that don't necessarily show up on the University Policy and Procedures (website), but we'll look into that.”

Ad hoc committee concerns

In other topics, at the Bylaws and Procedures meeting in April, an informal vote determined that a bylaws amendment — which normally requires a Faculty Assembly vote — is not necessary to ensure “adequate standing committee consideration” for the creation of ad hoc committees.

The discussion of ad hoc committees arose months ago when an Executive Committee proposal to create an ad hoc raised a voice of opposition, “feeling it had somehow stepped on the shoes of the standing committee,” Bircher noted.

“We've been talking about, ‘Do we really need a bylaws amendment to provide remedies under those circumstances,’ and the general conclusion at this point is, ‘No, we don't need an amendment,’” he explained, adding that elements in Robert's Rules of Order parliamentary procedures allow committee chairs and Faculty Assembly members to challenge a committee created outside of shared governance.

“Most of the time, ad hoc committees are created by bringing a resolution to Faculty Assembly, (and) everybody votes on it,” he said.

It’s become more common, however, for the Executive Committee or the University Senate president to simply create an ad hoc committee. “The question was, ‘Do we have adequate checks and balances (via) Robert’s Rules?’ and the consensus right now is, ‘Yes. There are adequate remedies.’”

An informal vote on April 27 affirmed that current safeguards are sufficient and an amendment is unnecessary.

Senate Council President Kris Kanthak informed the committee at the meeting that the Ad Hoc Committee on GenEd Requirements will make recommendations to the Senate “that will likely include new committees.”

These will require going through Bylaws, “obviously, if we're going to be changing (Pitt) bylaws to create some kind of new committee,” she explained. 

With the administration wanting this done as “soon as possible,” she added it “would be great if we were ready with some changes to the bylaws for the first meeting of Faculty Assembly (in September). “At the same time, we will take the time that it takes to make sure that it's done right … That's going to be coming down the pipe very quickly.

“It would be great if you all could get to it as soon as you can,” she added. “But you should not rush the process. This is important stuff.”

Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.

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