Metro State's administration and Human Resources office proposes to engage the services of HireRight of Irvine, California to conduct background checks on college employees. We previously reported that HireRight has a "CCC" rating from the Southern California Better Business Bureau, but our intrepid MSFF team just discovered that they have slightly improved their position. That's nice fore HireRight, but a low "B" does little to ameliorate our concerns that a company charged with investigating and storing information about us does not have the very highest possible rating.

In 2006, President Stephen Jordan authorized an Adjunct Task Force to investigate the working conditions of Metro State adjuncts and make proposals to improve them. Several recommendations were made by the president's Adjunct Task Force and many were promising. However, since its release in 2006 none of the  task force recommendations have been enacted.  As a result, a delegation of adjunct instructors from the Metro State Faculty Federation's Adjunct Organizing Committee met with President Jordan and Interim Provost Linda Curran regarding adjunct working conditions.

Since that meeting several of the AOC / MSFF members have been working on a proposal  that seeks to implement an adjunct promotion structure that addresses the situation of "career adjuncts." Click on the blue title line above to see the letter from Norman Schultz, (Philosophy), one of the members of the Adjunct Organizing Committee and MSFF Steering Committee member. It explains in more detail the origins and purpose of the plan to create a new employment category for "Affiliate Instructors."

You can access the link to the proposal itself directly below Norm's letter.

Metro State is proposing to conduct background checks on its employees.  The college's background check discloure form asks prospective and current employees to waive certain rights and permit investigations that many regard as an invasion of their privacy.  Some of the information, to be gleaned from an employee's neighbors, friends and colleagues, will be highly subjective. It's highly questionable that much of the information the college's consultant, HireRight, seeks to find, would serve to protect the college, but it would certainly give HireRight a considerable database on each employee.  There seem to be few limits on what HireRight can do with the information. 

HireRight is rated as a "CCC" company by the California Better Business Bureau.

See the MSFF's response to the background checks as well as the letter from our attorney, Joe Goldhammer, to college counsel, Lee Combs. Click on the blue link above to access the information.  You may acccess the letter from our attorney  from the link that follows the letter from the MSFF to the faculty.

More than 20,000 paraprofessionals and school-related personnel represented by the Oregon School Employees Association have voted to affiliate with the AFT, marking the largest affiliation of an independent union in AFT history.

What is shared governance? Our recent experience with the Pay for Performance plan at MSCD and the process by which it has been developed has raised some questions about what this essential aspect of an academic institution is – and what it is not.  The American Federation of Teachers recognized some time ago that there is a crisis in shared governance and that the role of faculty within it was being eroded through motivations neither scholarly nor academic. 

For a link to the AFT statement and more details, click on the blue title line.

Several faculty have contacted the MSFF, worried about their vote on the Pay for Performance plan.  A few have asked whether they should vote at all.  We say VOTE, and vote your principles.

Click on the blue title line for more details.

Tadini Bacigalupi,  Professor of Sociology who also happens to be the MSFF's Secretary, today emailed a statement to the faculty at MSCD, expressing his thoughts about P4P.  The ideas expressed here belong to Dr. Bacigalupi, but his remarks are essential to a thorough discussion of Pay for Performance.  With his permission we have reprinted his letter here.

Click on the blue title line for the full text.

When we first learned of the Pay for Performance proposal, many Metro faculty and the members of the MSFF’s Steering Committee feared that any such plan would create a divisiveness among our colleagues that was detrimental to the health of the college. Today's article in the Denver Post  again raises concerns.

The current proposal for pay for performance does not necessarily reward the professional responsibilities that matter to us:  commitments to our students and scholarship.  Furthermore, there is no sign of any commitment to fund this proposal at the level that would encourage any kind of performance