your time divided so or managerial employees within the meaning of the illinois education labor relations act focusing first on the managerial status of the shares i think it's important clarify what is not at issue when you read the ed ranging from budgetary decisions to work scheduling decisions and the board doesn't really contest that there is also really no dispute that the chairs have the responsibility actually have been endowed with the responsibility and the expectation of running their departments the board says i we should just stop well this is this is where it with this is where we get to the the issue the board itself quotes from the statutes that chairs are responsible for the formulation and execution of departmental policies and the execution of university and college policies in so far as the effect of the department that is right in the university statutes what the disagreement between the a university and the pollies really comes down to then is one of independent judgment and one of collaboration it's really the the gist of the board's argument as to why the chairs do not qualify as managerial employees the university believes to the definition found in the ad act very clearly found that there is no requirement in the managerial definition requiring independent exercise of managerial discretion and authority or exclusive in other words it's ok if an individual actually participates or collaborates with subordinates were other individuals to actually make a decision as long as at the end of the day that individual has the independent judgment to decide on his own or her own how to make a decision regarding one of those managerial decisions and what the university would submit is that taking the pelleas interpretation of the managerial definition to its logical extreme would soon lead to eb search results university submits that if it is that easy to destroy one's managerial oversight by simply voluntarily collaborating with subordinates or fellow managerial employees nothing would stop any employee from self removing them saw earlier in downing themselves with collective bargaining rights under the statute by simply whenever they have an obligation or an opportunity to make a decision that they will simply go and collaborate with subordinates or with other individuals that can't be the right interpretation of the statue let me ask you a question yes with that very could get here from campus dean didn't doesn't get but the department chair over in the college of fine arts is yasi doesn't want to be collaborative and or is my mildly collaborative but exercise is  more the function that you might describe well let me clarify my comment when i said it could differ from campus to campus as long as management makes it clear to the chairs that they have the decision making authority in the first instance it really shouldn't matter the extent of collaboration whether it's ninety nine percent or one percent what i meant to say is that if management directs the chairs let's say at another campus you will have no discretion you need to check with us you need to check with your that's where there is no record in the evidence whether there might be differences if you have a campuses yes i need campuses in general of state universities not just the ones oh well absolutely i mean that goes without saying that it would depend on what the managerial guidance and direction that i use you or western illinois or east nearly annoyed gave to their chairs so would you concede that the result could be different in another case it could be different yes yes the decision that you're going to be rendering today is limited to the thirty chairs at the springfield campus it's not going to have any effect on the champagne urbana the u i c campus or any other college campus here until we bring it up into late and sell the chairs aside to file a petition with  right right so at the end of the day just wrapping up the discussion because i really do think it comes down to a matter of statutory interpretation regarding the definition of managerial in the at the at at the end of the day we believe policy responsibilities to the faculty and that is true there are those various quotes in the university statutes you need to read the statutes in their entirety at the end of the day each and every one of those opportunities that the university gives faculty to participate in decision making at the end of the day is subject to the ultimate responsibility and decision making  that ice that i found in the in the statues when there's descriptions about the faculty senate odd they're responsible for educational policy subject to the approval of the board of trustees creation of department bylaws there was some discussion during the hearing and in the briefs about the fact that the faculty themselves create the bylaws for their departments there's a caviar it says that as long as nothing in those bylaws conflict with the statutes or directive of the board of trustees and at the end of the day th chairs themselves have to be approved and have to be assigned by the board of trustees and the deans from our perspective that is the that is the deciding factor that shows that university views the chairs has an arm of management as their eyes and ears for exercising managerial already at the department level reduced to its essence the board has found no managerial status simply because the chairs voluntarily choose to collaborate and consult there is contrary evidence in the record that other chairs actually do not collaborate to the same extent as their fellow chairs there is evidence that sometimes for themselves whether or not to approve budgetary funds for certain tools in the department so it shows the record shows that shares do get to decide for themselves based on their own personalities based on their own managerial style to what extent they will decide to collaborate with their subordinates and for those reasons we believe that the ad board's decision regarding managerial employees was clearly erroneous that they do actually exercise the independent judgment and meet the two prongs of the definition of managerial churning briefly to the confidential employee discussion in that respect the i p l rb we believe has suddenly switched its legal argument when you read the board original decision he makes it sound like any type of grievance information that is developed at the first step of the grievance process or any degree of a grievance information at all doesn't qualify when you read the board's brief they seem to have taken a step back and they now qualify their position and it seems that they are saying better only low level types of low level grievance information is not confidential  making this argument the board is misread illinois judicial and administrative case law the university has not been able to find a single decision that stands for the proposition that only high level grievance information can be confidential there logic dictates there is a host of information they can be developed at the first level of a grievance process that can be confidential for purposes of the confidential employee act and that really comes down when they really comes down to the to the authority that the first stop grievance adjuster has for deciding in analyzing a grievance depending on the when an individual is assigned at the first step of the grievance process that individual is an agent of the university and that agent is responsible for analyzing and developing a response to the ad board in its decision conceded and assumed that the chairs in this case would ultimately one day become the first stop of the parties grievance arbitration process where the went on to say though is that the information that the first step chairs would bend lean and abstain during that process doesn't rise to the level of confidential information what that overlooks is the following fa a first step decision maker is looking at a grievance analyzing it and decide to develop a response that first stop decision maker is privy to his or her own logic regarding this response do you think we have a good case what any weaknesses did you were you able to locate and identify in the university's case you are now putting that share and dividing it in a very difficult  and you're dividing deckchairs loyalties when it comes to whether or not they should cooperate with the union and share that confidential information or withhold that conference confidential information because they are an agent of the university and say no i'm not going to talk to you about that i'm going to control the flow of information between ourselves i would like to quote a statement from an administrative law judge from the illinois labor relations board it's not a presidential decision but it is i like t his rationale about a first step grievance adjuster having access to the confidential information in his or her own mind and i quote from this ministry of law judge decision involving northeastern illinois university the release to bargaining representatives or individuals of internal information regarding reasons for grievance denial or discipline decisions never intended for such release as well as recommendations would necessarily place bargaining representatives in the position of knowing ahead of time possible decisions and perhaps more importantly in the position of sometimes impeaching labor contracted it ministration by an employer by citing the employer's agent's own thoughts this is why the university believes they have shares we do qualify for confidential employ status we the university introduced sufficient evidence in the record to establish the fact that there was a reasonable expectation that the chairs would become the first step of the grievance process and the minute you accept that notion that they are going to be the first step of the grievance process they are going to be privy to all of their own thought processes and all of their own analyses when it comes to agreements so these reagan says could be significant they could involve significant sums of money they could involve significant organisational decisions involving the university scheduling decisions what have you and for the chair to be put into that difficult position of deciding whether to share or not to share that information with fellow bargaining unit employees is the crux of why they should be why they qualify as confidential employees let me just summarize my arguments and conclude with the following thought in the end the boarding unions interpretation of the managerial and confidential status definitions are unreasonably narrow not unlike the prior labor board case that this court reviewed in two thousand and eleven involving asked me in the state of illinois in that case central management services first sylar be the number zero nine zero nine the labor organization claimed that the best majority of state employees except for the governor and his policy team would fall outside the supervisory managerial and confidential employee exclusions under the illinois publicly relations act just this court rejected that overly narrow statutory interpretation so too should this court avoid a result that would prevent the university from having daily management oversight for the three hundred and fifty plus faculty members and graduate assistance at the university springfield campus which in turn would leave the supervisory managerial oversight for that large group to one chancellor one provost and forty it's spread across approximately thirty academic departments at the campus resulting in approximately a management to subordinate rate of approximately one to ninety even in the higher education context the university smiths at such a ratio is unworkable  all and for all those reasons as well as the reasons in our brief the university would submit that to be at boards decision should be reversed and that these thirty share should be excluded from the bargaining unit in question that chairs have the power in the authority to make hiring decisions when it comes to adjuncts as well as effective this charge decisions discharge in the sense of if the chair decides that the performance of the adjunct is not up to par or student reviews poor interpersonal skills poor writing skills what have you that sharon has the ultimate authority to decide not to bring that person that adjunct back for the next semester best not only a supervisory and disha but that is also a managerial disha and the reason it's managerial and there's cases that say this is the reason that chair is making those decisions is not just because the chair is a supervisor but the chair has a responsibility for making sure that the department runs smoothly that share his responsibility that students are getting the best education policy possible and that they are going to be able to achieve their ultimate goal of getting a degree so receive monetary or who ration or benefits is being granted well then that's not in the record graduates what is in the record of the graduate students if you are us are themselves part of a collective bargaining unit ok and their terms and conditions would be governed by their collective bargaining in a collective bargaining agreement but what the record does contain is that shares indeed serve in a supervisory managerial role ease of the those graduate students by deciding when to hire a graduate student into the department whether they need a graduate student or not and then evaluating how well that graduate student is performing whether the chair does it himself or herself or whether the chair delegate it to somebody else the chair ultimately has to decide whether to retain that graduate student or let their graduate who graduates and go after the semester have a faculty member saying i would wipe that graduate student who assists me we've harmed charity one would sign that graduate student to a particular moment later ultimately would be the chairs decision whether to approve or not or disapprove that retention of their graduates yes now some what you'll probably hear is that some chairs may decide to collaborate with their faculty it's find out whether or not that that will be a good fit but yes at the end of the day the university maintains its chairs decision and there may be some consultation there may be some consultation then with the higher level deans as well thank you responsible party in the teaching research and scholarly activities of the university the statutes provide that each other academic unit shall be governed in its internal administration by the faculty pursuant to bylaws that are  faculty under the shared governance model chairs work with the faculty of their department and operating the department as dean or manager describe it they are a spokesperson for the department and expected to take a leadership role in making sure that the department completes  responsibilities and communicates information to the university but in that role they represent the department higher levels of university management not the other way around as the university staff to provide chairs act independently faculty to make those decisions their role is not in directing the faculty it is being coordinated in the work of the department with the faculty additionally and it's important to note that chairs rotate  is not taking a vote on it or they're not even consulted about there's no evidence of that in the record that evidence there's no evidence that that dean could do that and the record of the evidence in the record suggested that chairs have done that they have made the decision to remove a chair and appoint a new one and have informed the dean that they made that decision but there's nothing in the record indicating that the dean is there anything in the record about the chancellor provost or be calling the department has together  hey guys you might not have been in this instance with this particular campus fundraising is an issue department chairs because they are the voice and face of that department are going to have to begin to engage in fund raising and friend raising in addition to urging faculty to do saying is there anything in the record like that or that that that i'm not really sure i understand your question well since universities now probably receive less than twenty percent of their funding from the state he even universities they're well off with funds sometimes find it necessary to engage in capital campaigns or fibrous you know for years and you can't just have that done or the movement is not to just have that done by development officers and presidents and provosts the development is apartment and i'm asking if those maybe even that didn't come up in this case but the department years would have to take a nap people and making sure that they and their faculty members in gauge the public had a fundraising campaign sure that's not in the record but apart from that from the evidence in the record and from the way that the university is structured in the university statutes are structured if that is something that donors sure of it and the dean as a part of hired ministration would have the authority to do that but in terms of and the department sure is the one that has to effectuate well the department back up she works collaboratively and the dean would have on me that authority given to me by the department back to you to determine how that department was going to represent itself and accomplish the objectives that higher levels of university administration have acquired it and that is why  chairs are not managerial employ the hallmarks of manager status are final responsibility and independent authority to establish an affectionate policy and the consequent alignment of bad employees interest with i looked at it and i just guessing the percentage forty plus percent of the faculty that it be supervised by the park cheers as a whole are non tenure track i think that's about accurate and only most of the chairs testified that only about a third of their employment time is spent and share responsibilities with the other two thirds going to their regular teaching and some of those are unsure said it was more than fifty percent one of the chairs said well it was only one said that it was more than fifty percent the average was about a third of their employment time and so when you when you couple that with the sort of nine managerial than nine adjunct the responsibilities that the chair has with respect to chair duties that are not related to their responsibility in hiring and retaining adjuncts then it becomes clear that that that the hiring and retaining adjuncts is not uppermost in importance or influence with respect to their job responsibilities i'd also like to briefly address  issue were already determined to be supervisors they were already did they already had authority to discipline employees and also to adjust grievances and so the determination that you were competent to employ is based in part on those factors which is different than what we have here and your system faculty members are not subordinates i share their colleagues of the chair and there's nothing in the record indicating that chairs have any authority to this the plan other faculty members and there's nothing there's no reason escapes is to take a look at what the undisputed evidence is with respect to what chairs do chairs have faculty appointments almost every chair spends at least half of their time teaching and all of the chairs he testified including the chair is called by management had active research and service responsibilities now in addition of that there are some duties the chairs have that are different than but that are not supervised so for example chairs have more responsibilities with respect to faculty advice and the faculty advising this is who are faculty obligation under university of illinois statutes under the faculty personnel policy chairs are responsible for pushing paper they're responsible for keeping the faculty personal process on track even though they don't have any more voice than other faculty members in terms of who gets hired to a regular position who gets promoted and who gets tenure so if you add those things up the question that you have is whether the university has time really support the decision of the administrative agency and surely refute any allegation that the administration agency was clearly erroneous when it decided that they were not supervisors in th they do research they do service and in addition to number one in most departments they rotate we had a couple of long serving chairs who testified but in most departments they rotate and number two the faculty in a department can get rid of their chair if they don't like it and we even have it i'd create example of that in the testimony in this case with the department of legal studies matt they decided he didn't like their chair they decided to take the chair out of the chairmanship put somebody else him and inform the d n c office and then went on with their other departmental duties and there was no evidence that the into office had any say whatsoever in what that department is the rating record which shows the d could have done otherwise so if you look at the faculty personnel  we'll give it be evidence we have of how the department of legal studies happened i think it pretty clearly indicates that the department puts their foot down the dean has no choice but to appoint a different chair or about a situation where they deem becomes disenchanted with our sphere sounds and wishes to discharge regardless of what he writes the only there was no testimony in the record on that issue all right so the only statutes because the university statutes specifically deal with the power of the chair and the power of the faculty and they say that chair shall have power to act is to collaborate with the executive committee in the preparation of the budget and be responsible for the expenditure of funds for the purposes approved by the executive committee and they further say that they cheered together with the executive committee is responsible for the organization of the work of the department and for the quality and efficiency progress of that work the collaboration it's not a function of management style it's a function of university statutes that's what the u of i require so in if you take the holding with respect to your managerial me all of the department years most of them continue teach two or three classes yes yes and they continue to have responsibilities have been somewhat reduced they have even though for purposes of research an advancement and educational purposes you do research all right that's right ok that's right that's  that if you look at the word predominate in the definition of managerial the court in the prior case in the fourth district held that fifty percent boy that was really close to predominate and here of the evidence quite clearly indicates that chairs have more than fifty percent thankful to do east and a complete faculty a point let me ask you the same question about the adjunct yes was there any evidence where a part departments had more than the average or a lot of badges so was there any evidence about how that department function sure gardy the department or and if the person says no i don't want to do it then the person can be given an overload side and the evidence in the record was that terms a regular faculty it was always worked out ok no chair ever had to tell fact remember you comes back from year to year there is no evidence in this case with respect to the amount of time that discrete function talk then and there was plenty of evidence that university wide chairs had responsibilities that back with the responsibilities of well exceeded fifty percent or so so if you take the lack of evidence put on by the university and the positive evidence of it as we we actually pay attention and i do appreciate that and i i apologize really the evidence in this case was that the university of propose yes thank you just to clarify one or two things that were mentioned during the response there is testimony in the record as to whether or not the dean can remove a chair on peach tree eighteen of the hearing transcript the provost who was actually once a dean himself mr permitting or actually testified as follows twelve if the dean believes that the chair should be removed they may discuss that with the department the department may or may not agree with the dean but the dean may still forward and remove the chair and at that point an election for a new share would take place that is not contradicted so just to clarify that one or two other points of clarification i believe it was mentioned that the non tenured faculty such as adjuncts are organized that you are yes they are not organized they are not currently part of the bargaining unit but you i see they are but not at you i asked and also to address one or two other minor points there was some talk just just now about whether or not cheers rotate and the frequency with which chairs will ascend the position of a chair  it is very good there was some testimony that in one of the departments and i believe steve was right legal studies that they actually had a a crack this of rotating because of the time commitment that the chair i think you heard testimony during the hearing you'll see that in the transcript that certain faculty don't like to do it it's it's it's a burden it takes them away from their teaching responsibilities and so they decided to share that so after so many years the faculty would vote another one of them one of their own fellow members to actually ascend and be a chair that is not how it's done in other departments other departments they have very long term chairs who everybody is comfortable with the chair is comfortable with his duties and that chair remains in that position long term the one piece of evidence that was cited about the department notifying the dean i remember that discussion very clearly i just reviewed it last night the testimony and cross examination was that faculty did not know what if any review or what if any interface there had been at the dean's level and all so for that as as far as the record shows the dean approved the replacement of the chair there is no indication that the department did it independence of or in lieu of the chairs oversight ability with that with those few points of clarification i would just like to renew the university's request  that the decision of the board be reversed and that these thirty chairs be excluded from the bargaining unit in question thank you would take this matter and