TRANSCRIPT

For immediate useNov. 5, 1997 -- No. 824

Floyd addresses police, grounds, housekeepers, grievance procedure

Following are excerpts from remarks made by Dr. Elson S. Floyd, executive vice chancellor at this morning's (Nov. 5) regular meeting of the Employee Forum:

... Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a lot said in the newspapers regarding our Police Department, and I want to talk very briefly about that circumstance. I also want to talk about housekeepers, and I want to talk about the groundskeepers and any other matters that may come before the floor. ... I apologize in advance for my extended comments, but the issues that we have right now are such that I think that it is absolutely important and time well spent to engage in perhaps a meaningful discussion about it.

Over the past several weeks, the University's Police Department really has captured much media attention, and I regret the circumstance for you and for the university, and for the Police Department, for, in fact, there are some very fine individuals in our UNC Police Department. The combination of police plus parking, I think, (is) doing a marvelous job in terms of providing first-rate service to the institution and I continue to be very, very proud of the working relationship and the association that we have with that particular unit.

As many of you know, Don Gold has indicated that he is going to be on leave from the university. At this point in time, I am not sure when Don is coming back. I will hopefully have a better sense of that by the end of this week, but I want to assure you that the University Police Department is still running in an efficient and effective manner, and I appreciate the leadership that the officers, Carolyn Elfland (associate vice chancellor for auxiliary services) and others have taken in terms of the day-to-day management there.

I've made a long-standing commitment to this forum. I have made a commitment to make sure that you are thoroughly engaged in the issues. I have also made a commitment to be very forthcoming in terms of the issues that we are involved in. Integrity is at the cornerstone of this administration and we have not wavered on that one iota and we will never waiver on that.

Now I want to speak a little bit about the events surrounding the citation that was issued at the UVA game. It is important to note at the outset that in any given day, I'll probably receive anywhere from 20 to 25 phone calls. All of those phone calls are not necessarily here. The vast majority of them are at home. The calls will range from a broken water line on Manning Drive, to a student who has fallen off a residence hall, to a Phi Gam fire. It really does cover the gambit and in my role as executive vice chancellor at the university, many of the day-to-day operational issues of the university fall on my plate. It is a responsibility that I enthusiastically embrace, because there is nothing that I am more committed to than this institution.

On the Saturday of the game in question, I received a phone call from Don Gold, chief of police, as I typically do, Don will call me on a fairly regular basis to update me on any issues or items that are occurring within the university. Among the items that he reported to me was the issuance of a citation that was given at that particular game. Our conversation ended with Don reporting that event to me. I then received a phone call from Carolyn Elfland on the next day, on that Sunday -- she again called me at home -- who then recounted the events that were initially reported to me by Don Gold. She then briefed me on the personnel issues surrounding the officer who issued the citation. I then instructed her to handle the matter in the way that she felt was appropriate. We talked for a while longer and she then said that she was going to hold the ticket until an investigation could be conducted surrounding the issuance of the ticket. I concurred with her approach because she was much closer to the situation than was I. An investigation was indeed conducted, and the issuing officer was consulted at the conclusion of the investigation. He was informed of the questions surrounding the citation at question here, and the final call for transmittal of the citation to the magistrate rested with that issuing officer.

Now, it is important to know that if any citation is issued by an officer, there is a 10-day window of time in which that citation has to be transmitted. The citation was written on a Saturday. It was transmitted to the magistrate, with the concurrence of the issuing officer, on the following Wednesday -- well within the 10-day window and well before any reported comments in the public domain about that.

Why did we conduct an investigation of the matter? There are indeed some significant personnel issues at the heart of that, and unfortunately I'm not at liberty to go through those details with you. Part of the protocol of this university, and part of the protocol of the American society, quite frankly, is to protect the confidentiality of individuals. Even though much of that information has already been released to the media by the officer, I still am not at liberty to go through those details. But the fact of the matter is that this administration has the right, and the responsibility, and the accountability of each of you in this room and the university and the citizens at large to conduct an investigation of any matter that we feel is appropriate. That's what happened and in some respects, you will feel that we would be remiss in our duties and responsibilities if we failed to do so.

Any number of you can call me on any occasion to say, “Elson, there is an issue that is important to me. I would like for you to look into it.” And my response, as all of you know, would be: “We will look into it and we will do it as soon as possible.” That's exactly what happened here. There is nothing insidious about it. There is no corruption at place here. There was no undue influence by any trustee on this matter. It is clearly and simply a management circumstance.

Now, our University Police Department has had a very long history of resisting management, in many respects. It has become a question of accountability and we have a lot of people to whom we are accountable. But I have said to this forum repeatedly, and I have always indicated to you and to others, that everything we do in this institution, we must be accountable to the public, and this is clearly in that circumstance. So was the officer consulted? Yes. Did the officer make the final decision? Absolutely. Was there undue influence by any trustee? Absolutely not. There was none of that. There was no corruption, there was no cover-up.

The question is perhaps, “Then why haven't we talked about this before?” As I said before, at the cornerstone of everything under the personnel issues that we have, and we simply have not been at liberty to do it because of that circumstance, but now, because so much of it is in the public domain, it did seem prudent to do that and I wanted to use this as an occasion to at least tell you what I know about the events surrounding that particular incident.

Let me talk just for a second about the Grounds Department. At the last Employee Forum at which I made remarks, I shared with each of you the fact that we had established a review committee to look at the issues raised by our groundskeepers. We in fact did that immediately.

The first time that I was aware of a situation in the Grounds Department, it was as a result of a press conference that was on the steps of South Building. I didn't know anything about it prior to that time. After that press conference I received a list of grievances signed by members of the Grounds Department. Well, it's very difficult for this administration to be accountable to anyone in that particular circumstance, but I'll tell you exactly what we did. As soon as that press conference was over, I immediately constituted a review committee to look at the issues raised by our groundskeepers. There was no hesitation, there was no ambivalence about it. We did it quickly, we did it expeditiously and I think we did it efficiently.

There were nine recommendations, and all of you hopefully by now have seen the nine recommendations. What do we do at that point? We said that we would immediately implement those nine recommendations because we believe that it would improve the quality of the workplace for our groundskeepers. There was no hesitation on the part of this administration to do it. It is all in the spirit of community, which we talked about before. So we moved forward, in terms of implementing those recommendations, and, quite frankly, if there are other recommendations that will be forthcoming to improve the quality of the workplace for any employee here, we are going to look at it. We're going to look at it in a very proactive way and we have done that in that regard. And we are going to continue to work and be responsive to the groundskeepers, and any other employees here. But the common thread associated with this, perhaps, is the fact that the employees in this particular situation felt that it was necessary for them to take their concerns to the media before they took their concerns to the administration. It does make it exceedingly difficult for us to manage in that type of environment.

Housekeepers. We have been very, very aggressive about implementing the terms associated with our housekeepers agreement. There is probably nothing that I have been more proud of than reaching an agreement with our housekeepers. It was an important time for this institution, both in terms of the official signing of the agreement, as well as the recognition that we have had since then. Now, with any agreement that is as complex as that one, it does take a while to implement all of the recommendations contained therein. But I can tell you, without a doubt, we have made good-faith efforts to implement all of the recommendations contained in our housekeepers agreement. On November 13th, there is a meeting, what's referred to as workplace quality meetings, in which we will go through, one by one, all the recommendations contained in the agreement, and provide the housekeepers and anyone else who is interested, an up-to-date status in terms of where we are with all of the recommendations.

Now, much has been said about the staffing levels associated in our housekeeping division. Barbara DeLon will perhaps talk a little bit more about that, but I wanted to just share with you where we are as it relates to our housekeeping department. As I have said, we will go through these matters in more detail a little bit later on. But right now in terms of full-time, permanent staff, we have seven administrative staff people. We have 305 zone managers or administrators or supervisors or team leaders in what is a large cadre of employees, and we have one half-time position that's a spot crew weekend coverage that we want to provide for those particularly troublesome spots that we have throughout the university. We have hired 10 new employees since July. And right now, we are actively recruiting for 40 vacant positions. Now, there is some belief, some speculation, that there is a freeze on positions. That's not the case. In fact, it has been very, very difficult for us to recruit persons for the housekeeping positions. And in those instances, we have tried to use temporary employees. But right now we are very aggressively seeking to fill the 40 vacant positions. Now why has it been difficult to fill the positions? Well, the fact of the matter is that if you were to look at any statistics, just call up and find them, the unemployment rate in this area is one of the lowest unemployment rates there is and, in fact, it has been very difficult for us to fill a lot of key positions. Many of you, from your university jobs and responsibilities, know that that is indeed the case. It is difficult to find qualified people to fill many positions. But particularly in housekeeping, it has been somewhat bothersome. We've actually had a number of hurdles. Some of the applicants have been unable to work the needed hours that we want them to fill their shifts. They are just simply not interested in the time frames that we have available. We have been unable to contact some of the applicants, either at the home address or the telephone number that they left with us. That makes it somewhat difficult when you can't get in touch with someone. Some employees have had unacceptable work histories and we've also had some poor references, or are unable to verify the references that have been contained. Those are significant problems. The fact of the matter, though, is that we really are working to fill out the rest of the housekeeping staff. It is inappropriate, it is not correct to say that there is a freeze on positions. There is no freeze on positions.

While I wanted to use this occasion to talk just a bit about police, that is to tell you exactly where we are, I want to talk about groundskeepers, in terms of what we have done, the spirit of it. I wanted to talk a bit about housekeeping. And as I said, we'll have a much more detailed briefing to provide to all the housekeepers. Are we perfect? Absolutely not. But there is no one in this room that is perfect. Do we do the best job we possibly can for this university? Every day that I work here and wake up to come to this university and leave, I think about doing the best job and, quite frankly, with your help and assistance, I think we are doing a very, very good job under some exceedingly difficult circumstances.

Now, we've had a grievance procedure here that, in my opinion, we need to go back and take a look at. We need to do it for a couple of reasons. One, is that there is an issue of accountability. That is, we need to be accountable to everyone for what we do. We need to make sure that we establish a mechanism in which if any employee has something that they feel that they need to grieve, there is a legitimate protocol and procedure set up to provide that remedy for employees. On the other hand, it is irresponsible for us to create a climate, an environment, in which frivolous grievances are lodged. It is a waste of taxpayers dollars for the time, effort and attention that all of us will have to engage in that process. And indeed, it causes the whole process to be questioned, if you will, the legitimacy of the process, for all of us, and so those appropriate grievances perhaps will not get the time and attention they deserve because we are spending our time chasing grievances that may not be appropriate. So, today I am asking Laurie Charest (associate vice chancellor for human resources) to work with Bob (Schreiner, Employee Forum Chair) to establish a review committee and we will review our grievance protocol and procedure in its entirety. It is absolutely crucial to involve the Employee Forum as we look at this because of not only your professional duties and responsibilities, but also because of the impact that it will have on employees here within the university. It is the right thing to do. It is a question of accountability, as far as I am concerned, and everything that we are engaged in will be predicated on accountability to each of you. ...

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Contacts: Mike McFarland, Liz Lucas (962-1365)