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March 22, 2023 Study Session...
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: So we call this Governing Board Study
Session to order. I think the first thing we're going to do is hear
from Dr. David Bea, correct?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: That is correct. Go ahead, Dave.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Good evening, Chairperson Riel, members of the
board, Chancellor Lambert, colleagues and guests. It's my pleasure
tonight to kick off this evening's festivities by doing an overview
of the class comp program where the college was, what we did to
address the different issues that we had in the past, and so it's
sort of putting some context around what we did and why we did it.
Then give the board an update of how it played out now that the
appeals have all processed through.
Then we will turn it over to members of the AERC to talk about
some of the things that they experienced during the process and can
have a discussion related to that.
So one of the things that I think is really important to
understand is there is no question this was a really challenging
project. It involved redefining more than a thousand regular
positions at the college, all during the same period that we were
going through COVID, and that we are experiencing inflationary
pressures that most of us haven't experienced in our working careers,
anyway, and then this massive change in work type, work performance,
and work experiences in terms of where you're working, how you work,
that sort of thing.
There were a lot of moving variables coming at the same time that
we were undertaking what is a major project for any organization. So
with that, let me go back a little bit, since most of the board is
new, to sort of restate a little bit about where we were and some of
the problems that we had.
The first thing is is that it's really important, classification
and compensation, and the compensation philosophy at the college,
really what's critically important is that it needs to enable us to
recruit and retain the talent that we need.
What we were looking to do is, in order to do that, make sure
that we are paying competitive wages for our employees, is align the
class comp structure to the market and then provide and value
experience from working at the college, and then also to create a
structure that ensures fair and equitable pay.
That said, the old structure was 22 years old. The position and
job duties were out of date, for sure. Jobs and the schedules hadn't
been updated for a significant period of time. They were updated
incrementally throughout that period of time. Some of the results of
that were that (indiscernible), so we had a situation where we might
hire someone in. In order to hire the person we need to do the job,
they might have been hired in at a higher rate than some of the
incumbent people at the college.
So that's called inversion. That's when you hire someone in over
someone who is already doing that same job at the college and you are
now paying the newer person more than the old. So that's inversion.
That's not a good thing.
In addition, we went through a period of time where there were
resource limitations starting with state budgetary reductions and
then the reductions related to expenditure limitation and the
challenges that came as a result of that, and then obviously COVID
impacts, things like that.
So there had been sort of a history of relatively low salary pool
increases, the suspension of the step program a number of years back,
and the results of all of those things was that we had a major
compression problem. 65% of our nonexempt employees were hired and
were at step 1, so no matter how many years they had been working at
the college, they were at the same pay rate that people who were just
coming to the college.
45% of exempt people had that same situation, and then 40% of
faculty were at the step 6, which is the point at which you would
start if you had certain years of experience. That's the equivalent
of sort of the step 1, that you would progress through that up until
step 6 and then you'd be stuck on that step.
So we had lots of employees all making the same amount of money
and sort of regardless of how many years they had been in the
position. Then there was limited recognition of how long employees
had been at the college.
This slide is a new slide, and what this shows is just how the
situation was. So what this is doing is it's showing where employees
are based on the new class comp structure, so along the bottom you
see the different bands. But then what it's doing is it's comparing
those individuals paid last year, '22, so before we implemented the
class comp structure, and how they are compared to, how their pay was
in fiscal year '22 compared to the market base.
So for each band it shows in comparison to what their market
comparison is. And you see if the number is over that blue line,
it's over 0%, means that on average people in those pay bands were on
average making more than the market comparison, and then the
positions that were below, that are below the zero point, are
positions that were making in some cases significantly below the
market comparison.
So you can see, in particular, a number of the bands show that
they were well below what we determined was the market benchmark that
we want to compare to. This was sort of our starting point. So we
are starting out low, starting out, and you can see that some of the
key positions, band 1 for staff particularly, and then 8 and 9, those
stick out and there is a big reason for it. One is that our band 1,
we made a concerted effort to raise the starting wage for regular
positions up. They had been at a minimum earnings of $15 an hour.
But we worked to increase that pretty significantly to address some
of the issues with the lower wage earners through this class comp
study.
The 8s and 9s in particular are positions that a lot of those
positions were technical positions that were probably undergraded in
the old structure, positions that require a lot of technical
computing-type skills, analytical skills, those kinds of jobs, that
are highly marketable. That's one of the things that has changed in
the last 22 years is that particularly IT positions and positions
that are highly marketable, we were finding ourselves not comparable
or not competitive in the marketplace for that reason. That's why
you see those positions are particularly low.
To go back a little bit in terms of -- oh, the one other thing
with this slide that's important is that the fact that the faculty
are high versus market and the staff are on average low versus
market, and I will show this a little bit later, is also a function
of years in the position. So as a result of the class comp
structure, the market benchmark comparison is we are trying to tie to
the market for that position. The market median is compared to
having eight years of experience at the college.
So if you have a band that has people who on average have only
been at the college for a year or two, they will naturally be lower
compared to the market. They are not expected to be at market.
Yeah?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Okay. A quick question. So the F1 through
F6, I'm assuming that's faculty, correct?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yes.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: That's not what we used to call faculty,
because didn't we have 12 steps for faculty? So is this the new
structure? There is only six steps for faculty now?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Six grades, yes, or bands. For your
comparison, that's F, F1, it's more equivalent to those. They're
slightly different definitions in those bands but they are more
equivalent to those bands. Not the steps, the grades.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Okay. So these marks you're showing that
now -- but the orange little dots, those are the prior salaries, not
the new salaries with the new pay?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Right. Right. They are fiscal year '22
salaries compared to the new market comparison, yeah.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Second question. Always I will want to
have staff and administrators separated out, because, and I don't
know what the new one is, but I do remember that the old step 1, and
I think that some -- I think nonexempt had 16 steps, and in prior
slides I do remember that they were shown together, staff and
administrator, and the problem with that is nonexempt was making
13.15 an hour, and that was step 1, and exempt staff was making, I
can't really remember, I don't remember the exact, but I'm going to
say, you know, 38 to 42 in step 1, and the administrators that were
in step 1 were making 79,000 to $104,000.
So I have a problem with these dots when it's combined
staff/administrator pay, because I can understand if we are only
representing the hourly wage workers, the nonexempt, because
obviously, you know, they are getting paid minimum wage. But when we
combined all three groups -- staff, nonexempt, exempt, and
administrators -- in these same dots, people on -- and I don't know
what we are calling them now, but No. 8 and 9, for example, the
differences between somebody who is a nonexempt on 8 and 9, their
salary, and the salary of an exempt staff and the salary of an
administrator, there is no way we can all represent all three of
those as a group in one dot.
So this chart doesn't make sense to me mathematically.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Okay. I think I can explain that relatively
easily.
So these are bands, like these are grades, not steps. So
regardless of steps, people are on different steps in all of these
bands, but these are the grades. And so in this particular case,
when you're talking about nonexempt folks, those folks would be in
bands 1, 2, and 3, maybe 4. The exempt folks would be the 5 through
9 -- actually 5 through 10. And then administrators are 10, 11, 12.
So there is a little bit of overlap, but it's not -- but these
are basically, if you look at the right-hand side, is generally the
higher-paid positions. The 1s, 2s, 3s, are the lower-paid positions
in terms of staff positions.
There are some slides later on that I think show that a little
bit more clearly, because this is sort of showing a couple of
different things and I think it's confusing.
But anyway, the point that I'm trying to make is that the
administrators and highly paid like directors are on the 10, 11, 12
side of what you're seeing here.
Okay. Yep? Board Member Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Okay. Go back to the previous slide,
please. Okay. I have to agree with Theresa that, the chairperson,
that these little dots, okay, so first of all, let me ask my question
and that is that when you're saying that F1 is at a 15% market
benchmark, favors as benchmark, please explain what that means.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: So in that F1 situation, on average, the
faculty who are in that band, so F1 band, that's mostly bachelor's
level, associate's and bachelor's level faculty, that those folks on
average were, in fiscal year '22, making 15% above what the market
comparison was. So they are making more than the average.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Okay. But I would still -- I would have to
agree with the chairperson that for clarity, these should be
segregated and including the pay scales for each of the --
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Okay. Agreed. I'm totally with you.
The whole point of this slide is just a really quick overview to
show you where people were compared to the market. So are they high,
are they low, a lot of our positions were low. That's really the
only major takeaway.
I mean, we can dig in much deeper. There are slides later on
that are going to get into more of the detail that you guys are
asking questions about. Happy to get into that with you in a little
bit. But I think I have some other slides that will show it a little
more clearly.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Okay. Thank you.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: And we talked with the prior board about this
and some of the ways that the process that was a pretty involved
process that went over multiple years, but that we also did involve
feedback from employees in a number of different ways.
We hired an external consultant, a nationally known firm that
does class comp for colleges, universities, as well as corporations.
That we held focus groups with employees to talk about what some of
their concerns were, what some of the issues were that they were
experiencing, so again, that sort of gets back to some of the points
that I said before, what we knew was not working with the old
structure.
We then had position description questionnaires that went out to
all the employees so that they could describe what they do within
their jobs so we can redefine their jobs and then match those new job
descriptions and new titles to the market, right. So we are going to
try and cite a market, try new survey information to make sure we are
paying competitively for the kinds of jobs that the employees do
here.
We had steering committees that had representatives from faculty
and staff and used them to find out concerns, issues that were going
on. That helped us through the process.
There were updates that we did, e-mail updates, college-wide
forums to communicate. We worked with the governance groups, Staff
Council, Faculty Senate, gave presentations to them, and worked with
AERC. You are going to hear a little bit that we could have always
done a better job, no question about it. There was a lot of
information that was coming in very late in the game.
This was a difficult enterprise to do. And there was a lot of
things that it was a big change for the college, and we did
everything we could to address the different concerns that were
coming up from employees and addressed them in various ways.
That's where this slide talks about some of the things that were
identified as concerns or issues or fears from employees, as I
mentioned, like compression and inversion. That was identified very
early on. We knew of that issue. So folding in and making sure that
years in position was one of the factors that related to how people
got placed in the new schedule.
Honestly, the most frequent concern that came up was people were
concerned that with the new class comp structure, if their job was
classified at a lower level than what they were making, if their
market comparison indicated that they would have a pay reduction,
were they going to lose pay, and that's where we made a pretty big
effort to ensure people that no one was going to lose pay as a result
of the class comp structure.
So we reassured folks of that, and then again, we got feedback
about more communication, the desire for more communication. AERC
gave us some feedback on improving the communication that went out to
employees.
There was a lot of concern about inflation, how were we going to
do that. One of the specific comments that was made with the AERC or
one of the steering -- it may have been the steering committee but it
may have been AERC -- was that faculty were very clear through this
person who was communicating this message that what was really
critically important was to get an increase in July, that if we were
able to implement the full class comp structure for July, that would
be great, but anything was critically important for July. So there
was a lot of pressure from employees to have pay increases to help
offset the effects that they were experiencing from inflation. So we
folded that in, and that had an effect on really pushing this through
and trying to make this happen.
Anyway, so these are the different things, and I want to make
sure that we have time for the group at the end, so I'm going to go
through some of the other things to make sure that we get through,
because I'm sure there are going to be questions.
Just quick and dirty, the old compensation structure had 25
different staff pay grades. As I mentioned, they had been
incrementally adjusted over time. Part of that was Meet and Confer
where the groups had some ability to decide whether step increases
happened or whether all of the increase for that group moved the
scales up.
That resulted in some things where there were inconsistencies
related to how people got placed and inconsistencies related to how
those positions were connected to the market. Again, they weren't
connected or reconnected to the market. They were just increased
over time with the resources the college had available.
So we had 25 pay grades. There were seven faculty pay grades and
then times two for days of accountability. The new compensation
structure is much reduced. That creates a lot of confusion. A lot
of people considered their jobs and the salary grade that they were
in to be somewhat like the same thing, somewhat synonymous.
Now there are broadband structures so that lots of different
types of positions that have similar market pay but might be doing
very different things are now on the same band. That's one of those
things that it's a change and will take a little bit of time for
people to understand that. I think we are getting there in terms of
people understanding how that works, but that was definitely a big
change.
Yes?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Real quick, times two for days of
accountability, that's because most faculty work 159 days, teaching
accountable days, but there are some faculty that work 10 months and
some faculty that work year-round. Is that correct? Is that what
that times two means?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yeah, 169 and 221 are the typicals, yeah.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: When class comp structures are done at
organizations, there are sort of three things that can happen. Your
pay could be identified as being above market, and then that could
have a potential for a reduction in pay. Organizations do do that.
Pay could be at market so there is no change. Then you have a
situation where pay is identified as being below market, and so an
increase is merited, right? So you want to pay people according to
market.
So that problem, the challenge then for that is that does the
institution or the organization have the resources necessary to
enable the full increase? Is the increase phased in? There were
conversations with the steering committees related to different ways
to phase in the program, and that could happen over the course of
five years where you get slight increases or get somewhat toward
where you're supposed to be, so you say, hey, based on our market
comparison, we think you should be at $50,000, you're at $40,000,
we're going to move you from 40 to 50 over the course of the next
five years.
That's something many organizations have done. Maricopa
implemented a phase-in approach like that and received a lot of
negative feedback, as you can imagine, right? If you're told that
you're below market, you don't want to wait years before you're
actually at the point where you want to be or where it's indicated
you should be.
So what we did is we invested as much as we possibly could last
year to meet people as far as we could in the scale. What that meant
is that we identified people's target point in the market. So that
is based on where they are in fiscal year '22, where the class comp
study indicated they should be with their years of experience, and
then we were able to go all the way to implementing it fully up to
putting a cap at step 12 or 12 years of experience.
So the cap is well above the market median, so all of our folks
are on pace or are being paid above market based on their years of
experience. So that was a major investment.
The other thing that we were able to do is again we guaranteed
that no one was going to have a pay reduction. Even if the study
indicated that they were currently making significantly higher than
what market would indicate, no one received a reduction. In fact
what we did do is gave a minimum increase to all employees of at
least $2,000.
So their placement became where the schedule indicated they
should be or the minimum -- whichever was the bigger of $2,000 or the
placement on the schedule. So that's where it was at least $2,000
more than fiscal year '22, but in a lot of cases, and you'll see, is
considerably higher than that as people were placed up on the
schedule.
So this chart shows roughly what we did. Again, this is what I
was just saying. It's just rolled forward rather than talking. It
indicates the number of positions -- now, this would be the
percentage of positions that were filled, so the total number of
positions. It doesn't total to 100, because it excludes positions
that were vacant or people were hired in between the two points,
because there is no comparison for those positions for fiscal year
'22.
What it shows is that more than 50% of the positions received
increases related to the class comp changes, and you can see the
average increase for those people when they were placed up on these
new schedules got large increases. So the average increases were,
for faculty, 17%, and for staff, a little bit over 20%. Then you see
the people who got minimum increases, you can see a little bit to the
side there what those increases were.
So a $2,000 increase for a lower-wage-earning employee is
obviously a bigger percentage than for somebody who is at the higher
end of the schedule. So we implemented this, and it came together
fast and furious. Part of that was making sure that we had the
resources through the budgeting process to be able to do as much as
we could within this class comp structure.
Then when we implemented it, we also recognized that there were a
lot of things that we were getting input both from the steering
committees, from AERC, and then what we were hearing from employees
also that there were various concerns because this was a big change,
right?
There was a lot of change was happening, a lot of confusion about
what the old schedule is versus the new schedule, what does that mean
for my position, how did you define where my position is in the band?
So there were a number of things that we did. We provided
additional information to employees, had more forums for employees to
ask questions. Most importantly, one of the questions that came up
in AERC was the concern about, well, what if someone is classified
and they don't agree with the classification? And we had said that
we were developing an appeals process.
As time went by, there was concern voiced that the appeals
process that employees needed or wanted more time to submit the
appeal, so we extended that deadline, and then went through a very
thorough and rigorous appeals process for those employees.
Now, that's mostly for staff. There were faculty who submitted
appeals, and there's some information that I'll be showing about
that, but mostly it was for staff. That's because staff placements
are defined by what the job duties are that they have. So each job
might be unique or there might be a handful of jobs and how they are
related and how they are described, can be something that, oh, I
don't think you described my job well enough, and I think that that's
important how it got categorized and placed. So that's why it was
really important to have a really rigorous appeals process.
The other things we will get back to at another point, because a
number of them are -- I will talk to you specifically in a minute,
and a couple of them are on the things that we know we haven't
finished everything we had, this is going to be an ongoing effort for
a couple more years, where we make adjustments to the way the new
class comp structure works. Things like the initial placement cap
was resource-based, and ultimately we don't want to have a cap on how
far people can go up into the schedules.
So we will be talking about, and we are working with the AERC
groups at this point, to prioritize moving everybody up at least one
year at this point with things capped by a year, and I talked with
the board in the tuition conversation and the budget conversation
about having the resources necessary to move everybody up a year, and
that would also include, the base budget that I was talking about
would include moving that cap up a year, as well.
Let's talk a little bit more specifically about appeals. So when
I talked with the board last we were still in the midst of the
appeals process so we knew how many appeals we had received. You can
see that on the left-hand side. That doesn't translate directly into
individuals. It's not necessarily 354 individual people, because
some of them were group appeals. They related to more positions than
one.
But you can see that the large, almost half of them were based on
the job description or the job level where it got placed. The job
title was something for some positions that is significant and
relevant to how people feel about it. That doesn't necessarily mean,
if my job title changed, that doesn't necessarily translate into a
pay change, right? It may or may not, but sometimes it's just the
title that you used to have is something that is important to you and
if you think it might be important to you moving to the next job, and
so what we did is we worked through some of them.
And Aida tonight who is with us tonight and Carleen have had a
lot of conversations with groups where the title is really important.
The band and what the pay level is is appropriate, but what the title
is is still something that is of concern.
Years of position is one, so a lot of the appeals were based on
the fact that we had in the system for a particular individual that
they had been in the position for three years, and they had
information that showed that they had actually been doing that work
for five years, so that's when you make that kind of an adjustment.
So you can see that in comparison to total number of positions
that the number of appeals, and the right-hand side pie chart
indicates the number of appeals or the percentage of appeals that
resulted in pay increases. So this is a pay increase that's more
than just a little rounding-error type of a thing. It's a pay
increase as a result of the appeal that was more than $20.
So you can see that the appeals that resulted from without a band
change was about 14% of overall, so overall, about a quarter of the
positions that we are talking about had appeals that resulted in
increased pay.
The majority of that 25% was for appeals that resulted in, again,
these are pay increases but didn't result in a band change. There
are two things that are important to understand. Those would the
years of experience, so the employee was able to show they had years
of experience that were different from what we had in the record, so
that resulted in a pay increase so then they got placed more
according to how many years they have been actually doing the work.
The other one is relevant because one of the concerns that popped
up that was an unexpected thing is that people who had been in
positions at the college for a long time but had received promotions
recently. So someone who had been working in one level job and then
became the supervisor over that job in the last number of years, what
happened, and this was an unintended consequence, is that the pay
they would have made if they had stayed in their old job with their
old years of experience, so someone who was working in the old job
for a long time, so they would have had a lot of years of experience,
then they would have been making more than what they were making in
the new job.
And so one of the appeal processes that went through was we went
back and looked at those individuals, gave them credit for their
years of experience in the old position, and then moved them up 7.5%
above that so that they then are making more than what they would
have been making in the old job, so that's one of the things that
happened in the course of the appeals process.
That was a concern that came up, and it was like, okay, that was
an unintended consequence and it's because we moved people up so far
that they jumped, that people with the years of experience jumped so
high that they jumped over people who were in the more supervisory
role.
That is something that's a one-time effect because the college
has a process for if you are promoted at the college, you get at
least 7.5% or greater, depending on what kind of a promotion you get,
but it's at least 7.5%. That's a one-time effect that again we
remedied through the appeal process.
Then I will go through the next slides fairly quickly. This is
sort of a recap of what I just said. So this shows the percentage of
employees who received increases that were, again, whether they
received the minimum $2,000 increase or whether they had an increase
that was greater than that, so you can see the large majority of
employees received more than $2,000 increases, because they got those
increases that were related to the class comp structure.
Then here are the average percentage increases for those
scenarios. So you can see that, again, and I said this in a slightly
different way, but it's showing the same information in a slightly
different way, that those employees who received adjustments based on
this new class comp structure received big increases. You can see
that the staff average increase was over 20%. The faculty was well
over 15%. Again, I mentioned that a few minutes ago.
These are the last two slides, and then we will shoot it over or
ask questions and shoot it over to the AERC folks.
These two slides show where individuals were, so this is
splitting faculty and staff now. Now, the staff does include
administrator positions but it's the staff, and again, these at the
bottom of this schedule are the bands. So F1 is associate's or
bachelor's level faculty. F2 is bachelor's plus 30 or master's
degree, et cetera, et cetera. F6 is doctoral.
So you can see here where the fiscal year '22 average pay for
each of those bands was compared to what the market comparison, and
again, this is consistent with what I said earlier, that because our
faculty are so senior and experienced and because of where the market
comparisons come out, that on average, that faculty in the lower band
range were making above what the market pay is for those positions,
but nevertheless, there were also big increases, you can see the
progress that we made for those faculty.
So you see the orange is last year. Gray is now, current. So
you can see that pay increase, that shows what the pay increase is
for those people, and shows it compared to market, that market
benchmark.
Then for staff, you can see the same information, just showing
along those bands. Band 1 is our most entry-level position. That's
their big increases there, because again, I mentioned those folks had
been at a minimum wage of $15, but we moved the minimum wage up
significantly as part of this class comp structure. You see there is
a pretty big increase between the orange and the gray for that band
1.
Then you see moving up along the pay structure, so you see the
bands here would be indicating the increased pay ranges for
individuals. That's where the nonexempts are going to be on the
left-hand side. Exempts are going to be in the middle to the right.
And then administrator positions would be on the far right-hand side
of these positions.
Then what's important, because these positions show as being in a
number of the cases below the market benchmark. So that was, again,
we were pretty sure that staff were below market before this whole
study happened. It confirmed that, and it's still the case, but one
of the things that's important to understand is that, and that's why
I put these numbers in, is that the years of experience in those
positions is quite a bit lower than the faculty. The faculty had
been in those positions for a long time. They are quite senior.
In this case, it's important to understand that the reason that
these positions are below market is not because the college is
deliberately paying them under market. It's because the positions
are lower in years of experience. So again, to hit that market point
would be at eight years on average.
That's just by way of explanation to help you understand that and
why I put those numbers in.
Yes?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: So when you're talking about market
comparisons, are you telling me that for staff, faculty, and
administrators you use the same benchmark, the same market benchmark,
or did you go differently?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: They are specific to the position that the
person is in. So faculty are compared to faculty of a similar type.
The faculty comparisons have a comparison to two-year institutions
throughout the country, and we ran that information and did that
comparison and shared that with the steering committee and also with
employee groups that they understood where those comparisons are
coming from.
Staff positions are compared to like positions. So it depends.
If you're an IT analyst, it's compared to IT analyst positions. It
could be both, we used both college and university information but
also private sector information. When it's relevant, right?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: So the analysis was done, you said,
marketwise. Was that nationwide or was it for specific skill or
specialty? Or was it within a region? Because definitely you would
pay somebody different in New York than you would in Tucson, Arizona.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Right. So it depends on the position. The
positions that are more local would be more compared to local norms
and the positions that are regional or national would be compared
more to national. So, for example, the faculty comparison was a
national sample.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Okay. Thank you.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: That gets me through all of the where we are.
As you can see, it's a difficult proposition to define or redefine
more than a thousand positions to really change the structure that
people are used to in a pretty substantive way, but I think the data
is pretty clear that they made really good progress toward these
market comparisons, toward ensuring that our employees are paid in a
competitive way.
That isn't to say that there isn't progress. We know there is
progress. There are additional things we need to work on and we are
in conversations with the AERC folks about that, and also with
Faculty Senate and Staff Council, giving them some updates in terms
of some of the priorities and how we are going to go forward.
Yes?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you, Dr. Bea. I just have a couple
of questions.
It seems like compression and inversion could be solved at the
college without hiring somebody to do that, and so I just want to
point out a couple of things. Everybody is still below these market
averages. So when you say market average, what do you mean by that?
There is a lot of different mathematical meanings for average. Are
we talking mean, mode, median? What value are we talking here?
And if these -- so this is not, these bands are -- it's sort of
like it's not years of experience, correct?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: No. The bands are based on -- so it's median
for the type of position that you're doing. So it's tied. And then
the salary survey information indicates, okay, this is the pay band
that that should be on. So the average -- the median earnings for
that position should be X.
And I'll show you another chart in a minute. I'm going to scroll
through to some of the additional information that we had.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Okay. Sorry, before we do that, so I just
want to point out that once again, median is the middle of the road,
that means 50% of people that are like our folks in band 6, 50% of
the people that you compared this to are actually making more than
that benchmark, and of course on the other side of the story, too,
50% of the people are also making less than that median.
So when all of those -- every one of those I think except for the
highest bar, the 12 or 16, whatever it was, everybody was below the
benchmark. So if -- on the prior slide. So everybody on the left
looks like they are below it up to maybe bar 12, right?
So I just want to point out that if this is a median value,
median means the middle of the road, 50% of the people surveyed are
above it, 50% of the people are below it. That means that still Pima
College, we are paying these staff employees, so whatever they are,
you know, nonexempt, exempt, or administrators, we are paying them
below the average, the median, in the people that you compared, the
schools that you compared them to.
I just think that Pima should be doing better. If we want to
attract good people, I think we should be in the top half. You know,
we used to be, we wanted to be, what, the third payer by two bucks or
whatever it was way back in my day, I think that we can be better
than this for our employees.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: So just, again, to reinforce a particular
point, so the target point is that after eight years of experience in
the job, so that's someone who really knows the job, that's the thing
that we compare to the market median. Because remember when you're
talking the market median, that would be people who, on average, are
experienced in their job, right?
So the idea is that we are tying -- and for staff, that's what
the midpoint is. So the idea is that after eight years of being at
the college, you will be at the median. You will be making market
wages and on-average market wages, right, with these comparisons.
This is a huge improvement over where we have been, because
people will now be marching up and making their way toward a tangible
point that is tied to the market. Again, it's making sure that
people are being paid competitively for the skills they are providing
the college.
And the reason that these are all lower, again, to reinforce my
point, if you look at the average of number of years of doing the
job, they are all under eight years, right? If the number was over
eight years, then you would find the way we are doing the class comp
study is they would have gotten even bigger increases or we would
have had a challenge because we wouldn't have had the resources to do
it.
But the way this structure is, resources notwithstanding, the way
the structure is set up is that they would be moving up, if the
average number was 8 for some of these positions, that you would see
that gray line would be at that blue spot. That's how this thing is
set up to work.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: So I don't see, in this chart, where
average years in the position. I thought that the numbers on the
bottom, 1, 2, 3, I thought that that was the bands.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: The number that's in the middle. The 7.1,
5.3, 4.5, so that indicates for the people in those bands how long
they've been doing, what their years in that position is. So you can
see they are under 8, on average, right, significantly, for some
positions. That is why there is a difference between the blue dot
and the gray bar.
Conversely, with the faculty one, the years of -- I didn't put
the years of experience in there, but faculty years of experience is
significantly higher, on average. That is why they are well above
the market median.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: Dave, just so I understand -- thank you,
Theresa, for those questions, because I was misunderstanding until
you asked those questions.
So in theory, let's take No. 7, for example, average years of
position there is 3.3. So if that average was 8, we would expect
that gray bar to be at the blue diamond at that point?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: It would be very close, yeah.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I just have one more math question.
Average, once again, you know, I could tell you some whoppers using
that word "average," so these numbers, the No. 7, 3.3 years of
experience, which average are we using? Is that mean, median, or
mode?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: That's mean.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Mean. Okay. Hmm. Thank you.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Any other questions before I turn it over to
the --
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Yeah, I do.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: You're muted, Maria.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: So No. 12, is that administrators?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: 12 is administrators, yeah.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: 12 is administrators. So on the average,
our administrators have been there on a medium of five years; is that
correct?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: If that is what it says, yes. On average.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: And they are making more than, right? That
little blue dot there shows --
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Right. Yes. In the band 12, on average, the
people in band 12 are slightly above the market average, the market
median.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: And why is that?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: The administrators in terms of market
comparisons, I think it's a bit more obvious when you're hiring for
administrators that what the level of pay is that you need to pay in
order to attract people.
So I think that there is sort of a natural mechanism that the
college didn't have with a lot of the other positions.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: So in other words, you value the faculty
differently than you value the administrators; is that correct?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I wouldn't say that.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Well, that's the way I see it. Thank you.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I think maybe that I'm going to second
Maria's -- from just the point that, you know, the original market
comparison that we did was for faculty, staff, and administrators,
and that was the pay raise people got in July. There were some
administrator positions that did not use that same market comparison.
They got a different market comparison.
What we were told is that the reason they went out for a new
market comparison for those administrators was because no one was
making the market median or the market average or whatever.
You know, I think that part of me, I'm going to second what Maria
said, because I'm pretty sure that if we went out on that new, if we
use that new market, you know -- I mean, I know you only did it for
administrators, so we wouldn't have had the numbers for faculty or
for nonexempt or exempt, but my guess is if we used that same group
of people that we used for the administrator pay raise, which they
didn't get back in July, that wasn't part of the compensation package
back then, I'm pretty sure if we used those schools for all of our
employees, maybe it would have shown that we even had, these little
blue dots on this slide would have been way higher than they
currently are if they were, you know, high enough that we were paying
our administrators.
I'm sorry, it's late, that might not have made any sense. But I
am going to say that, you know, the fact that we have treated our
higher administrators with a different comparison group than we
treated everybody else, I think that is not an equity thing.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I will just clarify one point.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Sure.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I generally understand what you're saying, and
I think that the idea with doing the market comparison is that if it
comes back showing that we are paying appropriately for the
administrators, then that's good. That tells us that we are paying
appropriately for our higher-level administrators.
Just to clarify a couple of points. There are only six positions
that were not part of this study. So they are the very highest
positions at the college. It's not all administrators or a majority
of the administrators.
The idea though with doing the secondary study is looking at it
and making sure, are we paying appropriately for our higher-level
administrators? Just to clarify a little bit, though most of the
administrators are on this structure that you're seeing here.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: Dave, I think I heard you say this before,
but just help me reiterate it, I know we are talking about the 12th
band, but you said there were administrators in 10, 11, and 12,
right? Not just in column 12?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yes, correct. And there are some director
positions that are in 10, as well. So remember that it's now tying
positions and what the position is responsible for doing to the
market and so you have positions that might be a director of
information technology of some sort that the pay that you need of
director of information security.
That's a really good one, and I think everybody would understand
that, that the pay that you need to provide in the market to be
competitive in the market for a director, somebody who is responsible
for being a director of information security, is a highly
sought-after in a highly competitive market. So the pay for that
position would vary. It ends up being higher as a result of that.
That's a little bit of a change. So there are director positions
that are now at or above what used to be administrator positions.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Dr. Bea?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yes.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: (Indiscernible) that were not in the
study. Can you share that with the board?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I will guess what I think the question is, can
I share what the six positions are that were not classified as part
of the study?
Pretty sure that I have shared that, but I'm happy to. I mean,
it's the executive vice chancellors, the chancellor, and general
counsel.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: We all got information. So we are just
going to have to look at that a little bit differently. The
information that I got, at least for the people you just mentioned,
it said they only had a $2,000 raise. So I don't know --
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Right. Yeah, there is something that you're
hearing that isn't anything that I have ever said. I will say it
again: That if people -- there were two approaches to what people
got in terms of salary increases. You got the larger of either
$2,000, so that's the minimum increase, or you got placed on the
class comp scale.
So if someone wasn't placed on the class comp scale, these
higher-level positions that I'm talking about weren't placed
anywhere, so therefore they got the minimum increase.
No one got zero increase and there wasn't another schedule of
some other type, just to be clear about that.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Okay.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yes?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: So I apologize if I'm misstating it, but
our CEO's contract is a percentage of the increase. So does that
mean that they got more or less? I'm trying to go around it.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Right. I have to actually look at what
specifically happened. The way that I'm thinking about it is the
$2,000 increase.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Okay.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yeah, and Jeff is nodding. That's how we
implemented it.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Okay. Thank you.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: And then, Makyla, just tell me, if you take
the lead or whatever, just tell me to scroll. I will do my best to
keep up with you.
>> MAKYLA HAYS: Thanks. Hi. Makyla Hays. You most often hear
me speak in public comment for PCCEA, but I am the PCCEA faculty
representative to AERC and was elected co-chair of AERC by the AERC
at some point in the last year and a half to two years.
So I am here kind of speaking on my experience, and also, I have
Ricky here from the nonexempt staff. And I had Jamie. I think I
just lost her. She had until 6:30, so she just had to pop out, but
she was here for the exempt staff. So her and Jason Brown may be
getting together after this, watching this, and then sending you
anything I forget to include from the comments that they shared with
me, because I want to make sure you hear from the exempt staff as
well. But I do have some notes to share with you from them, so I'm
kind of doing this from dual roles here.
So we got together and decided to try to give you three main kind
of concerns that we had, what were the details of those concerns,
what impact did those have, and what are the solutions that we could
see moving forward from those concerns so that it wasn't just time
for us to complain about things that happen, but like these were the
problems, here's how that affected us, and what we'd like to see
going forward.
So the first one was the AERC's involvement in the process. So
we have AP 1.25.01 that detailed out what the AERC does as a whole,
how we create policy, we work together in resolution teams, we
identify who is involved, and we come together as an agreement and
send that forward. There is also a compensation-based Meet and
Confer that's outlined in that AP.
So the issue was that employees on the AERC felt that in reading
that, that that was one of our resolution teams and we were the group
that we expected these things to go through, because it is really
significantly working conditions and compensation.
We were not the group that it went through. There was a steering
committee instead that was put together by HR prior to our current HR
director joining in. This group was put together, and I know that I
was on the steering committee for faculty and Ricky was actually on
the steering committee for the staff, but we were chosen and put on
that because of our roles within our respective representative
groups.
I kind of put my hands up and said, hey, we have to be involved
in this, but I wasn't really put on as a representative from the AERC
to that, and that wasn't clear to me or to Ricky. In fact, we both
felt that we, along with the other group, people that were chosen to
be on that group in the employee class, we were kind of asked not to
share things out, that everything was kind of in draft form, so
sharing things out soon would cause confusion and frustration.
So faculty pushed back a bit. We did share some things out. We
did try to talk about it and tried to get a representative view.
Staff didn't have as much opportunity to do so, from what I hear.
We did call for AERC to be involved in the process several times,
and we were told pretty much every time we brought it up that AERC
would definitely be involved, because policy was going to have to
change so it was going to come through AERC and we would have
significant input before it was implemented.
But the timing did not work that way, and it actually -- there
were some presentations, there were some questions that AERC asked.
We talked about some of these things a bit, but a lot of it was very
high level and without specifics of what those schedules were so that
people on AERC other than Ricky and myself had not even seen the
schedules while we were asking these questions, if that makes sense.
So it was hard to get really detailed on the questions when you
don't actually know exactly where you're at with that. It was very
general and philosophical in nature.
We had a presentation the Friday before the board got it to the
AERC where those schedules were actually shown, and an entire list of
questions put together by the AERC and sent out that weren't answered
until probably closer to or mid-July.
So it was voted on before the AERC really had any input, and
still we haven't actually implemented policy, and there hasn't been a
21-day comment on any policies for this, because we are still trying
to really get at the heart of what these things are and make sure
it's finalized before we put this through. We were kind of making
sure everybody was paid right, that we understood it and putting
language to it, but nothing has actually gone into policy just yet.
That board meeting, I don't know exactly what happened, but the
board voted before public comment, so I didn't even get a chance to
say, please, we're not ready, we can't do this, until after the vote
had already gone through. So that was kind of a rough one. That's
all the kind of detail, like the icky stuff behind it.
The impact of that was that the AERC employees did file a
grievance through ODR. There was a whole history with that and how
it was dismissed. I have all the documents if you ever want to see
it.
That resulted, the way that that all went down, in an HLC
complaint from the AERC faculty that was endorsed by the Faculty
Senate, because the concern was really with the fact the AERC wasn't
the group involved.
One of the solutions -- I'm going to come back to the survey
part -- but the solution to that was we did put together a resolution
team this past fall, and we worked with Jeff Silvyn and really tried
to hammer out what were the language differences, how did you read
this differently than us? Let's make sure that we are on the same
page going forward so this doesn't happen again.
So that should be out for 21-day comment or coming out for 21-day
comment in the next month or so as it goes through the AP process,
but we really kind of established that the Meet and Confer
compensation-based thing is a resolution team, it will be ran through
the AERC, and these are the voices that are going to be part of that
process.
We linked a survey in one of these slides that hopefully you can
get to later, but we surveyed -- I sent it out to faculty, Ricky to
nonexempt and Jason to exempt, and we sent it to all of our people,
all of our employees, and we got about 345 responses throughout the
college. 70% of employees felt their opinion was not solicited as
part of the class and comp study. Those info sessions that were ran,
and I'm going to get to those later, they really didn't feel like
that was a way for them to give input or their opinion.
Of those same people that responded, 85.5% of them said they
didn't feel like their opinion or input was valued or incorporated.
Even some of those that did feel that they had their opinion
solicited didn't feel they were listened to, because that is a higher
value. And I really think this is kind of just a big part was things
being kept confidential, and I'm going to get that in the next slide
or one of the next two slides, things being kept confidential that I
don't know that really should have been. I will get to that.
If you want to go to the next one, Dr. Bea. Actually, Ricky, did
you have anything to add to that one before I move on? Okay. I see
a no.
>> RICKY: No, that's fine.
>> MAKYLA HAYS: So the next one was the big thing we had was
communication issues and how things were communicated out. There was
some communication. I think the problem wasn't with the number of
times things were communicated but more about the content of the
communication. So the big thing was the lack of transparency in the
process. It felt very closed. I'm sure Ricky could attest to that,
as well.
We also, as steering committee members, sometimes felt like we
were not getting enough information. We weren't getting things sent
to us ahead of time so that we could prepare comments to bring an
informed decision or a representative view to those steering
committee meetings. A lot of times it was here's the information,
what do you think? We're like, we haven't even really had a time to
process this. I don't know what this all meant.
So when we did get some of those things ahead of time, it wasn't
very long ahead of time, and if we sent back questions, at least I
noticed that if we sent back questions, a lot of times our meetings
were delayed. It was pushed back a week or canceled for that month,
and then they'd come back and answer what they thought we asked, but
really that wasn't what we were asking and it wasn't a satisfactory
answer and still didn't give the info we needed.
Staff actually had, what was it, Ricky, eight or nine months or
eight or nine canceled meetings?
>> RICKY: Yes.
>> MAKYLA HAYS: They were only scheduled once a month to begin
with, and the staff had multiple meetings canceled while things were
going on behind the scenes, but they weren't told what those were.
They weren't told what was going on during that time.
So the communication as to why those were being canceled, what
was going on without them, that was unclear to the steering committee
much less to the rest of staff.
I was very persistent in our communications, possibly borderline
annoying. I'm going to admit that. But if we got the thing that
said we're canceled, my response was why? What are you working on
and what should we be having input on? I want to meet anyway. I
want to hear an update. I want to do these things.
I didn't love that I had to be put in the position to be pushing
back that hard to try to get a voice in what I was selected to be a
voice to, and our staff didn't have that opportunity. So that was a
bit of a structure problem, I think.
There were e-mails from HR to the college, but a lot of times it
was we're working on things or we're putting things together, the
steering committee is talking, we're researching data, but nothing
included no data, no examples, no charts, no suggestions of what was
going on, no detail.
So people would -- routinely that would get sent out and I would
get 10 to 20 e-mails from faculty going, what does this even mean?
Why are they sending it to me? I don't know what this means. What's
going on, what are you doing, I know you're on that team. I'm sure
Ricky and others felt the same way. They weren't sufficient
information being sent out and shared.
The input sessions were -- again, it was over COVID so we
couldn't do it in person, but the structure that it was sent on I
think was -- it was not conducive to actually getting feedback, and
the planning wasn't there to get that feedback back from people.
It was usually a Zoom or Q&A session or webinar, so people might
have the ability to put something in Chat or put something in a
question, but they couldn't ask their question. Really, not really.
They were, at the end of those meetings, there wasn't like a form
sent out or something that said here was what I did, give me your
feedback.
So I sent out a couple of things after those meetings with a link
in a form that said, here, give me your feedback, I'll bring it for
you. But again, that was a personal representative choice, and I
don't think staff had that opportunity or they didn't feel they
could.
So I'm hoping in the future that any type of large-scale change
like that there would be a much bigger look onto how to actually get
people to give real feedback that could be incorporated for that
team. Otherwise I think the big idea there was presentations to a
group is not actually consultation with that group and it's not input
gathering. It's a presentation to, you might be sharing some info,
but if they don't have a chance to actually change the direction of
where you're going, it's not an input session. There needs to be a
give-and-take into that. The survey results are linked there that
Jason compiled for us.
I'm going to let Ricky talk a little bit about the appeals
process, because really most of the appeals were on the staff side.
I think there were some faculty appeals, but it was mainly due to
communication about how their steps were determined, but staff had
some bigger appeals.
>> RICKY: Yes. My name is Ricky Gonzalez. I'm Pima Community
College's chairperson for AFSCME, and I work out of the M&S
warehouse.
For the staff, and Makyla spoke on these points, because there
was not an equity analysis performed on the previous system, it was
hard to understand how these pay gaps that relate to race, age,
gender, job description, seniority played in that system then so that
we can glean instances where there were these disparities and how we
can work with Segal in the new system to prevent these occurrences
from and assess correctly the history of the current population in
terms of their skill sets, their education, their years of service,
so that they can be equitably placed in these pay scales as well as
these job descriptions so that there was transparency and equity so
that, you know, these appeals would not have been necessary, as many
as they had been processed.
Because, for example, there were individuals who were senior
people in their positions, and they had been working with the college
for 10, 15, 20 years, and they were placed in support 1 or support 2
with a title that didn't even correspond to their responsibilities in
performing their tasks and their job.
So it was that frustration, and that caused a lot of, as you
know, turmoil in the sense of having any type of meaningful chance of
change in being compensated. So in that regard, it was...
>> MAKYLA HAYS: Yeah. Sorry, if I could add to that a little
bit, Ricky, I think what we noticed and part of what Dr. Bea had
referenced about putting things on the Intranet, people wanted to
appeal but they weren't sure what they were appealing because they
didn't understand the rules of the game. I kept comparing it to a
game like Monopoly or something and we had the game board but we
needed the rules to know how to move on the game board and to know if
I was placed fairly or to know if those rules applied to me.
>> RICKY: Right.
>> MAKYLA HAYS: There were some things posted that we asked for.
I heard recently from some staff that their job descriptions still
aren't updated, and they are being asked to do things that they
aren't sure is actually in that job description anymore, so there are
still some things that need to be updated and posted.
But it is such a big change for staff that knowing the rules of
that transfer and the rules of this new game is crucial, and having
that policy set is going to be important going forward. So that is
definitely something we need to get on the board.
For faculty, we are working on trying -- we had a pretty decent
schedule that we feel like was fair within faculty for the most part,
although we did lose our master's plus 60 column, so all of the
people that were almost a Ph.D. and didn't finish, they kind of fell
back a column, but then when the staff schedules came out, we
realized that we now had 20 years from bottom to top of the scale and
staff had 16.
Our yearly step increases was around 2.25%, whereas staff's were
looking to be closer to 3. Staff had this 7.5 increase when you go
up in responsibility when you kind of get a promotion, if you will,
but the salary bands for faculty were kind of all over the place,
between 6 and 12.
So faculty, we kind of reworked our schedule to have a little bit
more internal equity with the staff, and we're looking to see if we
can make that one work for next year. And there is a cost associated
with moving to that, because of course there is, right, but it's a
16-step schedule with closer to 2.9%, it adds back in that
educational column of master's plus 60, and it has more of an 8%
increase as we go across.
So we are trying to respect that internal equity within faculty
and the market rate but also between staff. So those are things
going forward.
I did want to say, just because I kind of harped on the AERC not
being a part of it and the transparency and the communication, we
have really worked hard on redoing a lot of our AERC processes. So
things that are within the AERC have ran pretty smoothly, and we have
had a couple really good examples of how to involve AERC at the
beginning of an issue and work quickly if necessary and really
involve the areas that need to be and how to communicate that out.
I'm hoping that those can become a model for future
compensation-based discussions and how to get input and move these
things along in larger discussions like this.
So if we can go to the next one, because I know we are behind on
time. I'm trying to kind of -- board members, stop me if you have
questions on anything. I know I can talk pretty quickly and a lot.
Just let me know.
All right. Our last point is vendor concerns. This is really
kind of focused with how the relationship works between Segal and
mostly, honestly, this was mostly me, but I know Ricky had some
concerns as well, but the vendor and how they interacted with the
steering committees.
So the first one was because AERC wasn't really part of the
steering committee process, putting that together, we also weren't
involved in choosing a vendor or deciding whether or not we needed to
get one for all of the groups or how we were going to choose
representatives to that committee.
So the AERC employees should have been probably involved from the
beginning, because they are a group of elected representatives of the
people in those groups, not hand-picked by, you know, other groups.
There was a really long delay in the process of deciding the peer
institutions, because I haven't stopped asking questions, and I'm
going to fully admit that was mostly on me and some of the other
faculty in my group with me. I just didn't do it on my own.
But, you know, we needed all of the groups to have the same peer
group institutions, so we had the staff kind of having their
conversation of peer groups and the faculty having ours, and we had
this kind of funnel of decision. Maria, to kind of get to your point
about New York, Arkansas, like who are we including, who are these
institutions, how are we deciding? And we had this kind of like if
their student population is that, if their employee population is
this, if their budget works this way, we can include them.
And then when we were finished, there was basically the Arizona
community colleges were also thrown into the mix, which
geographically makes sense, but we were trying to figure out why,
because they didn't fit our funnel of decision.
So those conversations lasted a very long time. I want to say
three, four months, before we were finally, yes, okay, we're fine
with this group, we understand, go ahead and move forward, but it was
tedious to get answers back from the vendor when we had them. So
knowing that the peer institution is determining our market rate and
that the market rate was going to determine everything else, that was
crucial for us. But it did cause a delay, because the vendor didn't
expect to have that pushback.
It felt very much like they were largely responsive only when
administration would ask the questions. So we would ask questions,
and they would just kind of look at us. Sometimes they would answer
kind of surface level, but then we would get more of an answer if
administration was, like, yeah, we need to look into that, then they
would look on it and work on it.
It felt frustrating. As an employee sometimes, I'm like, it's a
legit question, why are we not just answering it? And they would
bring things to us and present them to us and we'd ask questions
about it, and they would have to bring us an answer at a following
meeting.
I didn't feel like they were answers that should have been
delayed. If they were presenting it to us, they should have known a
lot of the time.
So until they could answer the questions we had about the
schedule, we weren't willing to agree on a schedule, because I didn't
understand what they were saying. We didn't understand the schedule
when we're not going to choose it. So that was a big delay in the
process, as well.
As Ricky mentioned, they had asked for a pay equity analysis to
figure out, like, do we have gaps in gender, race, age, job
descriptions? What are the gaps that we have? Are there some
significant issues? Where are they? How can we help use this
large-scale change to help address some of those gaps? They did not
receive that.
Let's see. I'm sorry. I'm trying to make sure where I was at.
So I mentioned that when we asked questions that the vendor kind
of would delay sometimes meeting with us afterwards. There were
times I know that I held back asking a question over e-mail ahead of
time, because I had this feeling that if I asked that question, we
would not be meeting that next month, and I needed to meet with them
to hear what was going on.
Around March I started to really kind of push for some extra
information from them, like they're getting paid the big bucks, I
wanted them to answer the questions. I wanted to know what were the
national norms for paying people in different areas or for paying
people for things beyond graduate credit hours and things like that,
and I had asked them that, and I think they were offended, honestly,
I think they were a little offended at my questions, and they kind of
stopped participating in our meetings.
So they would come and cameras would be off, and most of our
answers came from the college, which was great, because I do feel
like Dave Bea gave us really good input. When he was there, we got
things done and we got input. Our voices were heard on the faculty
side when Dr. Bea was working with us, and we were able to get some
movement on things. But the consultant wasn't really responsive to
that, if that makes sense.
So solutions, basically we have so many highly paid -- not highly
paid, highly educated is where I was going with that, highly
educated, passionate people who have these massive strengths in our
areas, and I just wonder sometimes if we could use our money a little
bit better to tap into our employees' talents a little bit more and
have them do some of that research, even almost to like a
sabbatical-level funding type thing and could we reinfuse that money
back into Tucson's economy and bring in that talent.
I do understand the idea of having a national company coming and
presenting these things to us. I felt like what we got was a very,
almost a cookie-cutter presentation in a lot of ways. So there was a
lot of money put into that that I feel like we could have probably
put more into paying employees more, and there is some value in it
because we hadn't done it before, and it was an interesting look. I
don't know if it was the wrong vendor or if it was that's just how
things go and I just have high standards that were not met. So I
will say that as well.
But in the future, I would like to make sure that the charge of
those steering committees are super clear on what is the input level
so that all of the people on the committee, including those that are
serving on the committee, know exactly what level of input they are
going to give so that that energy isn't there trying to figure that
out as you go.
I think that's a huge amount from me, so...
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Well, thank you, Makyla and Ricky, and we
always like hearing from everybody's point of view, even though these
meetings might run a little long, just because it's important to know
what the impact is on everybody.
One of the first things I did is I did ask permission from Aubrey
Conover to attend the AERC meeting, and I was so impressed with every
single one of those people on that committee. You know, that was one
of the first committees that there was a part-time temp working on
the AERC. She was even contributing amazing thoughts and ideas.
So to me, it seems like if Makyla says that the steering
committee, you're putting energy and effort in but you're not being
able to participate fully because of the way it was set up, that is
something that we want to look into.
I think that maybe we, as a board, we should also look into do we
want to spend our monies this way, too, if it could have been done
with our own people. So that is a bonus.
Makyla, I don't know how this is going to affect the AP 1.25 that
you had talked about, but I am also going to bring up a board policy
1.25 in our meeting in April to talk in our regular Governing Board
meeting to talk about how, you know, if we can have this, all of our
employee groups, administrators, staff, nonexempt staff, exempt
staff, and faculty all work together and bring consensus to these
agreements, maybe we could do that without having to hire an outside
firm.
So I hope that me bringing this board policy forward in April is
not going to make problems for the AP that you guys have been working
so hard on. So I apologize if it does.
>> MAKYLA HAYS: It shouldn't. If there are any changes we need
to address in it, we'll pull it together. That's what we do.
But you're the board, you set the policy for the board policy,
and you set what you want to see, and the AP will reflect and not
contradict it. I don't see how it's going to change it too much. I
think it will be fine.
I think we're on -- I'm happy to work on that a little harder if
we can make things smoother and a good structure.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Okay. Board members, are there any other
questions for Makyla or Ricky?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I have a question.
At the top of the slide it says employee group feedback, and at
the bottom, you have solutions. Can you identify the problem that
you are recommending these solutions to solve?
>> MAKYLA HAYS: Yeah, so for each slide there were three kind of
main concerns that we had. The first slide, I don't know if you want
to go back a couple, Dr. Bea, to the first slide I had, so the first
one was about AERC involvement, and so we were thinking in terms of
AERC being involved in that process of the steering committees.
Our solution was to work with the college and work on AP 1.25 to
ensure that the voices are clearly defined and the roles are clearly
defined.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: What would that look like?
>> MAKYLA HAYS: So essentially, as the representative group, we
would want to form those steering committees. We would want to put
the faculty forward that would be the representative voices for
faculty, put the staff forward that would be the representative
voices for staff, and that we would have the kind of the ability to
say we're going to send out a survey and figure out what people like
out of these things.
We are going to represent our voices by actually going back out
and getting that input and bringing it back through our voices and do
on a large scale what we do on a small scale at AERC through our
resolution teams.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Then when those voices speak, what do you
want to see happen with the input that the voices have?
>> MAKYLA HAYS: So when we ask questions, we'd like to see
answers, if we are looking for data or trying to help determine kind
of what should the percentage look like? Should it be 16 steps or 20
steps? Just have a legitimate voice in that process and have it be
more of a consensus-building event instead of performative.
Not that this one was for faculty necessarily. We actually got a
lot of the things that we asked for, and if you look at what we put
in place, it was very different than anything Segal actually
proposed. So faculty did have that voice. I don't know if staff
feel that they did as much.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So are you asking that the implementation be
put on hold until this occurs?
>> MAKYLA HAYS: It's a little late, because we have already been
paid on it since last July, so I did ask for that in my public
comment last June, but I'm more looking for a commitment from the
college in the future to involve the AERC as the legitimate voice for
employees in working conditions and compensation.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Thank you.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: If I may just ask a question real quick,
Makyla, what Dr. McLean is asking, I believe, is it is in board
policy that we believe, it already is in board policy, that we
believe in shared governance, and it seems as if all of these details
and impacts that you're talking about on these three slides show
where shared governance did not happen either through not having your
questions answered, not being in meetings because they were canceled
because of different things, and then it sounds like Segal and
somebody even other than the steering committee decided the final
product.
So it sounds like what you're saying is that you just want to
make sure that shared governance is respected and uplifted at the
college, because when we do shared governance, we know that the
product is better.
>> MAKYLA HAYS: Yes. Absolutely. But even more specifically
that the -- so the AERC is new, and it used to be that PCCEA was the
faculty representative group and would negotiate our policies
separately with administration. There was a very structured and
clear process for how policy was built and it was published once a
year.
When AERC was built, the structure, it's coming together, so I'm
liking the direction it's going, but I do feel like the employees
lost a little bit of that voice and that standing to say policy goes
through this group, policy changes go through this group, employees
have a voice in this process this way, and so I think this was just a
very large and impactful example of there being employee voices
involved.
There was faculty on the steering committee, there were staff on
the steering committee, but they weren't from the elected
representative group in AERC as AERC representatives.
So it should be the AERC group that's the respected voice of the
employees within those conversations in the future, is what I'm
asking for, mainly because hopefully, and we are starting to really
build it, there should be a mechanism for us to be able to get
feedback and to bring our employee voices to the college
administration and say this is what employees are saying, this is
what we need, this is where consensus can be built, not just with
this group of five people but with the employees as a whole so you
don't get 400 appeals, and hopefully you get much less.
And I think that was what was really missing from this process,
is it's not about necessarily what people are sitting in the room but
what people represent who are sitting in that room and how are they
actually bringing the voices of others to those conversations, if
that makes sense, to really solidify that shared governance model.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Okay. Thank you.
>> MAKYLA HAYS: I'm a little bit passionate about it (smiling).
So I appreciate it.
I really appreciate the board having a moment to listen to the
employee voice of how this went. I also want to kind of clarify it's
not necessarily about what we got. We're not saying we should have
got more money or something along those lines.
It was really more of there were some process issues here that we
want to make sure that we iron out, because future processes should
be able to go smoother. Let's learn from this and really make sure
that things go well in the future.
I think there are things that we can improve still with the
implementation, with the current pay structures, but it's not about
what we're being paid. I think you'll see that on all of this. We
didn't put in here that we didn't get enough money. There is people
that think that, but that's not what I'm here to present to you.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Okay, great. Thank you.
Any other comments or questions? Maria?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Makyla, I want to thank you for your input.
The board is here to support and listen to everything you guys have
to say. Because, you know, we're here to ensure that the college is
successful and that the students are.
Then the other part that I want to say is that you guys are the
forefront of making this college successful. You guys are the most
important thing in this place, and the students respect you guys and
we do too. Thank you.
>> MAKYLA HAYS: I really appreciate that, and I will take that
back to the AERC group and to the other employees and let them know.
I will send that to them.
>> RICKY: Thank you for that, board.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you, both. I know that what you do,
not only Ricky and Makyla in your everyday jobs at the college, but
also all the energy and effort that you're expending on behalf of
your fellow employees is really impressive, and that is also a thing
that makes the college very, very strong.
Thank you.
Chancellor Lambert?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: I just want to say thank you all for your
feedback on the process, and I'm committed to, you know, working
together to keep improving on what we have been doing.
I think, as you pointed out, Makyla, this is a fairly new
process. And remember, some of this was impacted by decisions in
Phoenix, not necessarily decisions that were made here locally, and
so I want us not to lose sight of that.
But the other thing is I want us to also thank Dave and
especially Aida in HR, just the time and amount of effort she put in
to go through all of these appeals was just, you know, a phenomenal
amount of effort on her part. I don't want that to get lost, and to
thank Carleen and the folks from that side as well.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you for bringing that up. That is
true. Everybody at the college is doing their part. We're glad of
that.
Okay. I think this brings is to our last item on our agenda for
tonight, which doesn't have anything to do anything with the class
and comp, but it's about our board self-evaluation. I notice that
Andrea sent an e-mail, a link, Google Forms link out to all of the
five board members.
And so sometime between now and 25 minutes from now (smiling),
will you take a minute and look at that if you have the energy
tonight? Otherwise do it soon. I didn't have a chance to read it,
because I noticed it was in my e-mail after we started up in a
different meeting.
But I know that it's going to be sent to somebody else, but I
would ask if you feel comfortable, board members, will you also send
me a copy of your results just so, as the board chair, I can
understand what everybody is thinking, and then we can talk about it
more as a board?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Yes.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Okay, great.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: Theresa, is this the right one? Maybe I'm
misremembering, but I thought the one we wanted to do had both
evaluate ourself and evaluate the board, like there were two. And
this just doesn't have that.
Maybe I'm misremembering what we decided
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Oh, I didn't look at the -- it was 10
questions, and it was one for us to evaluate ourselves individually
as board members and then the board member as a whole, yes.
Let me just look and see. Maybe it's the wrong one up here.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Madam Chair, we can make sure we send out
the right instrument. I will have Andrea work with you to make sure
we have the right instrument, and then we will send it out to
everybody.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Okay. That sounds great.
Okay. Anything else?
Well, thank you, everybody. It was wonderful to --
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Luis wants to talk.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Sure. Luis, thank you.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: I just want to -- it was a good
presentation, very informative. One of the things that came out
maybe strongly, and I do agree with it when Ms. Makyla Hays mentioned
to be super clear in reference to transparency but also full
disclosure as well, too.
I like the information (audio issues) -- the thing is...
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Hey, Luis?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Yes.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I'm sorry, for some reason your audio is
not coming through clearly. We can only hear like every third or
fourth word you're saying. I'm sorry.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Okay. Let me just say this -- can you
hear me?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Right now it's working fine, yes.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Let me just say this. It was mentioned
earlier that we need to have it super clear and be transparent, but
more important, listen to the staff and faculty reference to any
issues and concerns, because the presentation is significant, and the
voice of them, but also in reference to what us as board members
really need to do and address and ultimately find the solutions that
we need to.
Thank you.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you, Mr. Gonzales.
With that, thank you, everybody. Have a wonderful evening. We
will see you in under two weeks, I think, for our next board meeting.
Have a wonderful first couple of days of spring and thank you.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Thank you.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Good night.
(Adjournment.)
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