Sherri's Been a Good Girl

Sherri has been very helpful to Paul Mason. She was the one who compiled the bogus efficiency reports. She was the one who watched English and Wilson in case they went across the street to their parked car or walked down for coffee. She was also the one who called IT and asked them to perform an audit on the computers belonging to Carpen, English, and Wilson.

She’s done a lot of legwork and it looks as though she’s about to receive the reward for her perfidy. Read on…

Edna Chun, Associate Vice Chancellor for Human Resources, has submitted a request for the creation of a new position: Senior Director, Media Relations. The person who fills this position would report directly to the Associate Vice Chancellor for Marketing (Paul Mason). The job description is signed off on by Paul Mason and followed by an organizational chart showing three new director’s positions the Senior Director of Media Relations, a Senior Director of Strategic Communications, and a Director for Digital and Social Media.

Looks like we’re about to get three new positions, right?

Wrong.

Before I get into that, though, I want to point out a little asterisk that you might not have noticed. It’s in the box reserved for Sherri MacCheyne’s position. If you follow the asterisk to the bottom, you will find that she is now scheduled to have her salary revised.

Sherri’s getting a raise – a little reward for all the hard work she’s done carrying boxes of fabricated evidence that Paul didn’t feel like picking up. Here, in these times of financial hardship, I suppose it could be coincidence that she has been singled out for a raise...

But back to these 3 ‘new’ positions.

When Debbie Schallock and Betsi Robinson were relieved of their positions through a Reduction in Force (RIF) initiative created by Paul Mason, the reason for their release was listed on their letter of termination as due to ‘reorganization.’ This is one of the six officially sanctioned reasons that an employee can be ‘separated’ as part of a RIF under the Policy Manual for SPA and EPA-Non-Faculty Employees. In other words, these are positions where the employees cannot simply be fired at will.

This “reorganization of positions within the unit which materially changes the nature of one or more positions” was undertaken and Schallock and Robinson were let go. Now those positions are back. The material changes to positions? The former position of Director of Marketing has been renamed Director of Media Relations. The former position of Director of Communications has been renamed Senior Director of Strategic Communications.

The sneaky bastard fired two outstanding employees by removing their positions one day and then bringing the positions back under another name. And now open to be filled by those who are more desirable by the administration. This is akin to when Clark Kent puts on his glasses assuming that no one can recognize him as Superman with such a superficial change. Only, we’re smarter than Lois Lane and even if Mason puts on a fake beard and an English accent, we can still smell him.

That third ‘new’ position? It’s the disguised version of the one that was vacated when Lyda Carpen, who was Director of Creative Services, was arrested as part of the means of terminating her employment. Now that there’s going to be a public hearing and the possibility of her firing being overturned once and for all, they have decided to remove the position she once held and replace it with this Director for Digital and Social Media.

Does that mean that if her firing were to be rescinded, she could simply be removed because of a RIF due to reorganization? I don’t know, but I can see where they are headed with this. If there’s a chance they’ll try it.

This reorganization leaves the department with 16 positions, just like it had before…only there’s one more crucial difference. The previous positions were all classed as SPA, an acronym that stands for State Personnel Act. This is the act that establishes the policies and practices for the hiring, employment, and termination for state employees. 

This is the law that does not allow the Chancellor, for example, to fire an employee at will.

The new positions created are classified as EPA. This stands for Exempt from Personnel Act. These new positions would not have the same protections from unreasonable termination as that which the Chancellor has so proudly upheld in her latest response to Carpen’s grievance process.

Therefore, we have shifted these positions from being created for employees who can count upon some level of protection from the whims and caprices of their supervisors to those that would make the employee wise to ask no questions and have no scruples should they wish to maintain their employment.

The new job description was created on November 1 and received by Human Resources on December 9. The players have been busy recently. There’s more in here, but we’ll leave it at this for now.

So, Sherri gets a raise and Paulie gets three new Directors. I think I know some people who should apply…