Title: Grievance of Rosenberg v. Vermont State Colleges

State: vermont

Issuer: Vermont Supreme Court

Document:

Grievance of Rosenberg v. Vermont State Colleges (2002-524); 176 Vt. 641;
852 A.2d 599

2004 VT 42

[Filed 05-May-2004]

                                 ENTRY ORDER

                                 2004 VT 42

                      SUPREME COURT DOCKET NO. 2002-524

                              MARCH TERM, 2004
  	

  Grievance of June Rosenberg and 	}
  Vermont State Colleges Faculty 	}	APPEALED FROM:
  Federation, AFT, UPV, Local 3180, 	}
  AFL-CIO                               }
                                        }
       v.	                        }	Labor Relations Board
                                        }	
  Vermont State Colleges	        }
                                        }	DOCKET NO.  02-8

             In the above-entitled cause, the Clerk will enter:

       ¶  1.  Defendant Vermont State Colleges (VSC) appeals from a
  decision of the Vermont Labor Relations Board concluding that VSC
  unlawfully retaliated against grievant June Rosenberg by not adjusting the
  spring 2002 course schedule at Lyndon State College to accommodate
  Rosenberg's scheduling preferences.  We reverse.

       ¶  2.  Rosenberg has worked as a part-time faculty member of the
  Lyndon State College (LSC) Psychology Department since 1993.  She belongs
  to the VSC Faculty Federation, the collective bargaining unit that
  represents faculty members in the State college system.  Her grievance
  against the college involves course scheduling and teaching assignments. 
  Scheduling and assignment decisions at VSC are guided by provisions of the
  union contract.  Assignments for part-time faculty like Rosenberg are made
  on a semester or summer basis by administrators at each college in the
  system.  Spring semester assignments are made during the fall, and fall
  assignments are settled in mid-summer.  The contract requires the college
  to consider faculty preferences when developing semester schedules and
  teaching assignments.  To do so for part-time faculty, the college
  distributes a form on which part-time faculty members must state their
  availability to teach and may indicate their preferred teaching schedule. 
  The form must be distributed by April 1 for the fall semester and October
  15 for the following spring semester.  The teaching preference form
  notwithstanding, the school retains discretion under the contract to assign
  part-time faculty to a schedule that does not meet the faculty member's
  preferences.  The school is contractually bound to give priority to
  full-time faculty and administrators over the preferences of part-time
  faculty, and assignments for part-time faculty are made on a seniority
  basis.  The contract allows the school to deviate from contract assignment
  procedures in extraordinary circumstances, or when the school finds an
  individual with exceptional qualifications or expertise to teach.
        
       ¶  3.  In addition to accounting for faculty preferences and
  schedules, each college must consider the educational needs of its student
  body.  Doing so requires taking into account the skills and expertise of
  each faculty member.  An additional consideration is balancing the needs of
  day-time students and those of non-traditional students who work during the
  day.  To meet the needs of both categories of students, LSC generally
  schedules day-time classes to meet two or three times per week, while
  evening classes are offered once a week for longer time periods.  
       
       ¶  4.  For the 2001-2002 academic year, LSC's academic dean
  established additional guidelines for course scheduling.  First, to
  increase the number of day-time classes available to traditional students,
  the dean asked faculty to spread day classes out over multiple periods
  during the week.  Second, the dean asked that evening classes begin no
  earlier than 5:30 p.m. to make it more convenient for non-traditional
  students to attend. 

       ¶  5.  This case arose from the schedule LSC developed for the
  spring 2002 semester.  In any given semester, the Psychology Department at
  LSC has to schedule four to six full-time faculty members and four to seven
  part-time faculty members.  The Board found that the Department began
  working on the spring 2002 schedule in the first week of September 2001. 
  During the last week of September, the Department's co-chair, Ronald Rossi,
  discussed the tentative spring schedule with Rosenberg.  Rossi, also a
  union member, was responsible for coordinating department faculty teaching
  requests and preferences.  In their conversation, Rossi told Rosenberg that
  the tentative schedule accounted for the new academic guidelines the dean
  issued for the 2001-2002 academic year.  The tentative schedule assigned
  Rosenberg to teach two sections of an introductory psychology course, one
  section meeting on Wednesday evenings from 5:30 p.m. to 8:10 p.m. and the
  other on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9:00 a.m. to 9:55 a.m.  In
  previous semesters, Rosenberg was scheduled to teach two classes on
  Wednesday afternoons back to back, a schedule she preferred because of her
  commute from home. 

       ¶  6.  Consistent with her earlier position, Rosenberg objected to
  the schedule saying she wanted to continue the Wednesday-only teaching
  assignment because of commuting and child-care considerations.  Rossi told
  Rosenberg about the next Psychology Department meeting and said that he
  would raise her concerns about the proposed schedule there.  Rossi did so. 
  Rosenberg did not attend the meeting, and the Department chose not to alter
  the tentative schedule.  In early October, Rosenberg submitted her
  availability form to the Department, stating that she would prefer to teach
  "Wednesday all day into evening."  She also wrote: "If I could teach three
  courses I would be willing to be on campus 2 days.  Otherwise the present
  schedule is preferable."  She did not indicate that she had any other
  commitments preventing her from teaching any particular day of week or time
  of day.  On October 16, Rossi offered Rosenberg the schedule at issue in
  this appeal.  Although Rosenberg accepted the assignment, she filed a
  grievance claiming the school violated her contractual rights when it
  designed the spring 2002 schedule. 
   
       ¶  7.  Rosenberg pursued her complaint about the schedule to the
  Vermont Labor Relations Board.  Rosenberg's main complaint alleged
  procedural violations of the contractual provisions governing part-time
  faculty assignments.  She also alleged that VSC violated the
  anti-retaliation provision of the contract by offering a spring 2002
  teaching assignment that did not accommodate her preferred teaching times
  and resulting in significant inconvenience to her.  She pointed to the
  disparate treatment she received in comparison to other faculty members
  whose preferences were accommodated as proof of retaliatory conduct. 
  According to Rosenberg, the school dismissed her scheduling preferences to
  retaliate for an earlier grievance she filed after not receiving a teaching
  assignment for the summer of 2001 while a less senior faculty member had. 
  Other than the fact of the grievance, and that Rossi told her seniority did
  not apply to summer assignments, the record contains little information
  about the circumstances of the earlier grievance.  Rosenberg acknowledged
  that she taught during that summer despite the initial non-assignment, and
  that no faculty member spoke to her about the grievance.

       ¶  8.  In a split decision following the Board's evidentiary
  hearing, the Board agreed with Rosenberg's claims in part.  The Board found
  no procedural violation of the contract, noting that Rosenberg was assigned
  the minimum number of credits available to part-time faculty under the
  contract for the spring 2002 semester.  Although the Board found that VSC
  would not have given Rosenberg the schedule she wanted even if she had not
  filed a grievance about the summer 2001 semester, it concluded that 

    . . . it does not follow . . . that the Employer would have given
    Rosenberg the identical schedule it did give her even if she had
    not pursued her grievance.  It is striking to us that no
    accommodations were made to Rosenberg's preferences.  The Employer
    has not presented persuasive evidence that some adjustments could
    not have been made to Rosenberg's schedule, either through time
    changes or a reduction in the amount of days she needed to be on
    campus, to make her schedule more convenient. 

  To find a contractual violation from the school's treatment of Rosenberg's
  preferences, the Board had to determine that the school was motivated by
  some impermissible factor, such as Rosenberg's earlier grievance.  Noting
  that the school had accommodated the preferences of two other faculty
  members but not Rosenberg, as well as the fact that the decision on the
  spring 2002  semester came after her grievance about the summer assignment,
  the Board found that VSC was unlawfully motivated by the prior grievance. 
  The dissenting Board member, Acting Chair Park, concluded that Rosenberg's
  dissatisfaction with the spring schedule was not a legitimate grievance
  under the contract.  This appeal followed.

       ¶  9.  We begin with our standard of review of Labor Relations Board
  orders.  We accord the Board's decisions substantial deference in
  recognition of its expertise.  In re Hurlburt, 2003 VT 2, ¶ 18,