ARTICLE 22 - SENIORITY, LAYOFF AND RECALL

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU ARE LAID OFF?
Your Rights Under the ACSUM Contract

NOTE: No summary or paraphrase can take the place of the actual contract.  As in any legal document, exact contract language is important.  To understand your rights, always read the contract article itself.
A lay-off is “the discontinuance of University employment of a unit member for bona fide financial or program reasons” (Article 22§B1).

SECTION ONE: Special Cases

1.    Are you on soft money?

• •    If your position is wholly grant-funded (a “soft money” position), you lack some of the lay-off rights extended to other regular employees.  You don’t qualify for four weeks’ notice or for extra severance pay for three or more years’ service.  You may not “bump” another employee if you are laid off.  However, you can not be bumped by anyone else.  (See below for details on all these.)
• •    The rationale is that grant funding, which supports your position specifically, insulates you from general budget cuts.  As long as the grant funding continues, you will keep your job while others are losing theirs (Article 22§B6).

2.    Do you work only 9 or 10 months a year?
    If you have an academic year appointment, your summers off are not considered lay-offs.  Your summers off do not affect your seniority.  For lay-off purposes, it is as if you worked a “year” that is only 9 or 10 months long (Article 22§A1).
 

SECTION TWO: Who has what rights?

1.    Have you worked for the University of Maine System for less than six months?

• •    The first six months of “continuous credited service” as a regular employee of the University of Maine System are a probationary period.  During this probationary period, you may be dismissed without a demonstration of “just cause.”  During this probationary period, none of the other rights given to laid-off employees apply.
• •    During the probationary period, you may not be dismissed for reasons that violate the Maine Human Rights Acts.  This means that you can not be fired simply because, for example, the University discovers that you are pregnant, gay, divorced, Franco-American, Muslim, or older than they thought you were.  You can not be fired because you have applied for workers’ compensation benefits or reported violations of law by an employer.  If you believe any of these circumstances apply to you, contact a union rep immediately.
• •    Once you complete six months of continuous, regular service, you automatically acquire six months of seniority and other lay-off rights outlined below.
• •    You only have one probationary period for any term of continuous service.  This means that you can transfer to another position at the same university without losing seniority (see below), and without having to serve out another probationary period (Article 35).  If you transfer to a different university within UMS, you lose your seniority.

2.    Have you worked at least six months?
    Employees who have completed their probationary period have some basic rights under the contract with respect to lay-off.  Some of these rights, as noted, do not apply to those in wholly grant-funded positions.

• •    You must receive at least four weeks notice of layoff.  (This does not apply to soft-money positions.)
• •    Upon layoff, all employees (including probationary and soft-money employees) will also be paid for vacation time or comp time accrued but not taken.
• •    Those not on soft money who have worked at least 3 years of continuous service get additional weeks of severance pay (Article 22§B2):
• 3-5 Years    1 Week
• 5-10 Years    2 Weeks
• 10-15 Years    3 Weeks
• 15-20 Years    4 Weeks
• 20+ Years    5 Weeks
• •    You have the right to keep your name on a recall list for two years following lay-off.  If you are on the recall list, you will be directly recalled to your former position if it becomes available.  You will be notified of vacancies on your campus.  You can apply for these as an internal candidate (Article 22§B).  You must notify HR (preferably in writing, via e-mail) that you want to be placed on the recall list.  To continue receiving vacancy notices, make sure they have your current contact information.
• •    If you are on the recall list, you will be eligible for half the employee tuition waiver benefit (Article 26) for two years.
• •    You can participate in University group life and health insurance plans for one year following lay-off.  You must notify the University in writing within 30 days of lay-off.  You must also pay all these costs yourself, although there is a government program (COBRA) that may help with these payments (Article 22§C).
• •    If you participate in the non-contributory retirement plan, you can maintain your membership in the plan for one year following lay-off, although no additional benefits will be accrued (Article 22§D).

SECTION THREE: Seniority & “Bump” Rights
NOTE: Bargaining unit members on soft money can neither bump nor be bumped.

1.    All UMS classified employees who have worked for at least six months of continuous, regular service have seniority, based on their date of hire.  (If you have changed jobs or received a promotion, this “hire date” is not the same as your “anniversary date,” the date on which you began working in your current job title.)

2.    You can check your “hire date” by going to Maine Street’s Employee Self-Service page, double-clicking on Payroll and Compensation and checking your Compensation History.  If you think your hire date is incorrect, contact a union rep.

3.    To check the seniority list for your campus, contact campus HR or a union rep.

4.    When lay-offs occur within a department where more than one unit member is employed, bargaining unit members within a classification should be laid off in reverse order of seniority.  In other words, if two Administrative Assistants I work in the same office, and one is laid off, the laid-off worker should be the least senior, unless the University can demonstrate that this less senior employee has a “substantially different” qualification, relevant to performance of job duties, which the more senior employee lacks (Article 22§B2).

5.    Any laid-off bargaining unit member who has worked for at least two years can ‘bump’ or displace the least senior worker on his or her campus who has the same job title or is at a lower classification in the same job progression.  These job progressions are listed in Appendix E of the ACSUM contract.  (For example, if you are an Administrative Assistant II, you can displace the least senior Administrative Assistant II, Administrative Assistant I, or Secretary.)  If you have changed jobs, you may exercise these ‘bump’ rights in a previous job classification in which you served satisfactorily (Article 22§B4).  (For example, if you are now an Administrative Assistant I but previously worked as a Records Technician II, you may also displace the least senior Records Technician II or Records Technician I.)

6.    If you have worked at least four years of continuous service on your campus, you need only have the “necessary skills and ability” to do the work of the employee you would displace (Article 22§B4b).

7.    If you have worked at least two but fewer than four years of continuous service on your campus, you must also show that you are more qualified than the person you would displace (Article 22§B4c).

8.    In order to ‘bump,’ you must notify your campus HR office that you intend to exercise your displacement rights within five business days of receiving your lay-off notice.  It is best to send this notice in writing, by e-mail.  Because the window of opportunity is narrow, it is better to file a notification to bump and then decide not to do so than to forfeit the right by waiting.

President’s Note:
If you choose to bump but HR tells you that you can't because you do nothave the necessary skills and ability, contact your union rep.

Note: In this article, as well as everywhere else in the contract, when itrefers to "campus" it is referring to the university, ie; UM (UMCE is partof UM for the purposes of the contract), USM, UMFK, UMM, UMA, UMF, UMPI.  
It DOES NOT refer to campuses of those universities such as Portland, Gorham, Lewiston for USM and Augusta and Bangor for UMA.   So this means, for example in the case of USM, that when it says you bump the least senior person at your campus, it means the least senior person in ALL of USM, which may mean someone at a different campus of USM than the one where you work.