Charge to the Presidential Advisory Committee on Workplace Policies
This committee is being assembled to provide input to the President concerning policies and practices affecting Stanford University employees and others working on our campus.
In particular, the president would like the committee to consider four areas:
- The policies regarding temporary employees and mechanisms to ensure compliance with such policies;
- The living wage policy and policies guiding the use of Stanford University contractors;
- Educational opportunities for employees; and
- Mechanisms to ensure compliance with the legal rights of employees and the University in connection with union organization.
Temporary Employees
Some of Stanford’s operations make regular use of temporary employees to handle seasonal activity, unexpected demands, temporary staffing shortfalls, or limited time appointments. Without the use of temporary employees, the university would be unable to undertake certain functions or would incur substantially increased costs to maintain staffing levels that are rarely needed.
The university has policies on the use of temporary employees designed to ensure that temporary employment is used for temporary, rather than long term or continuing, assignments. The questions that we would like the committee to explore are:
- Are our policies regarding the use of temporary employees fair and adequate?
- Do we have appropriate mechanisms for ensuring that such policies are followed?
Living Wage Policy
In response to a variety of concerns about the use of contractors to provide services on campus, Living Wage and Benefit Guidelines were established in 2003. These guidelines were designed to provide a safety net–-a minimal standard–-for all people employed by contractors who provide these services on the campus. The guidelines were designed to provide a minimum standard of compensation/benefits for people who are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement, are working on our campus, and are performing work similar to that performed by Stanford employees. The policy is designed to be simple to apply and requires minimal bureaucracy. In addition, the policy avoids interfering with collective bargaining agreements that typically have complex contract terms, which would be difficult to compare to the standards set by the living wage guidelines. The actual monetary amounts were determined with reference to the guidelines set by the City of San Jose.
The university uses Stanford University contractors for a variety of purposes, including to gain access to skills or expertise not easily available through its normal employee base, to handle limited duration or time-varying workforce demands, and to improve productivity and efficiency. Of course, the decision of when to subcontract a service versus provide the service with University staff is a complex one involving the assessment and balancing of many factors often unique to a particular task.
The Living Wage and Benefits Guidelines were adopted to ensure some basic protection for people employed by subcontractors. The key question for the committee is whether the existing policy is adequate or should be amended.
Educational Opportunities for Employees
Stanford believes in the importance of education for individual advancement. Thus, it is committed to help support the interest and desires of its employees to advance through education. Although the University cannot duplicate services offered through other local institutions, such as the community college system and other adult education programs, it is committed to helping its employees take advantage of these external services and to providing occasional educational services.
The key question for the committee is whether the programs offered by the university in conjunction with those offered by other local institutions provide adequate opportunities for employees to gain new skills and capabilities and thus access to better career opportunities.
Compliance with the Legal Rights of Employees and the University in Connection with Union Organizing
The university respects the right of employees to choose whether or not to organize and bargain collectively as provided by federal law. This does not mean that the university will remain uninvolved in attempts to organize, but it does mean that the university will abide by the outcome of an employee vote carried out pursuant to the applicable law.
The question for the committee is whether our existing policies provide adequate protection of employee’s legal rights while respecting the employer’s rights in the process.
Timeline and Confidentiality
The committee is asked to complete a review of these four areas by the end of Spring Quarter 2004 and issue an interim, if not final, report.
The committee will likely request access to certain university records that may be considered confidential. In addition, to achieve a final set of recommendations that have the broad support of the committee will likely require complex and confidential discussion. Thus, the contents of meetings and interim discussions will need to be confidential. Only the final report and recommendations will be available to the broader university community. Violation of the confidentiality of information and of the committee discussions will be considered as grounds for dismissal from the committee and for possible dissolution of the committee.
|
