Bumping stresses resources

By Don Clyde
The Guardsman

Many City College departments already strained by class cuts and increased enrollment are also being affected by a wave of losses and shifts of skilled clerical staff that began last November due to a process known as bumping.

City College, as well as San Francisco Unified School District, work under the merit system of the San Francisco Civil Service. When civil service employees are laid off in a particular job class, those employees displace, or “bump,” employees with less seniority into lower positions under the purview of civil service.

Layoffs of over 470 civil service personnel at the San Francisco Department of Public Health resulted in a chain of City College clerical workers being bumped into lower positions or put out of work completely, while being displaced by higher-seniority employees.

Clara Starr, City College dean of human resources, said 32 DPH employees were bumped in to City College clerical positions, many with no experience working in education.

A senior clerk typist of two years in the labor and community studies department was bumped to a south of Market health clinic in San Francisco. Bill Shields, chair of the department, said the loss of the seasoned typist was a great blow.

“She did payroll, paperwork, communications, online work, scheduling, hiring and special projects,” Shields said. He said she was a competent office manager who had made close personal bonds with the rest of the staff. He added it takes years to bring new clerical staff up to speed with the systems in a particular department.

Shields also blamed the bumps on the state’s inability to raise money for public education. He said the Republican minority in the California legislature keeps the state from raising new taxes for education because of the state’s requirement for two-thirds majority vote.  “The two-thirds system has to go,” he said.

“I support bumping by seniority, but I opposed the layoffs at DPH in the first place,” Shields said. Shields worked with unions to fight the layoffs at DPH, but said the unions felt betrayed by Mayor Newsom because layoffs went through even as the unions were negotiating wage reductions to stop the cuts.

Many other City College departments have felt the effects of bumping.

“This requires lots of new training because of the unique computer systems at the College,” said Madeline Mueller, chair of the City College music department.

She added the bumps were especially problematic due to the resulting need to train new staff at the beginning of a new semester, which is one of the most strenuous times for clerical staff.
“People who have more seniority have more cost,” Mueller said, referring to the acquisition of higher-paid city workers. “It’s very hard for the college to handle.”

The music department’s secretary for the last three years, Patricia Kimball, was moved to a position in the City College child development department during the bumps. Originally a full-time employee, Kimball was bumped to school-term-only status, resulting in a 17 percent pay cut. Kimball is being trained for the duties required at her new position. She said the transition is difficult.

“Everyone is suffering horribly,” Kimball said. “There’s lots of inefficiency and lots of stress.”
She said the learning curve to train new secretarial staff is steep and results in time taken away from the actual work of running City College.

“It’s pretty hard when you lose experienced staff,” Hal Huntsman, president of the Academic Senate said after losing an assistant. “From a faculty perspective there’s not a lot of benefit to bumping.”

Huntsman said training time is taxing the resources of already stressed employees. Shields, Huntsman and Mueller are all concerned that future bumping might be on the way. Huntsman added future bumping might affect a broad range of City College job types.

San Francisco is facing a $522 million budget deficit for 2010-2011, and Newsom has requested city department heads to cut up to 30 percent of their operating budgets to close the gap.

“We don’t know about future cuts, but I imagine there will be some impact on personnel,” said Anita Sanchez, executive officer with the San Francisco Civil Services Commission. “There is a strong possibility of bumping in the future.”

No one can confirm, however, whether any possible future bumping in San Francisco will have any impact on City College.

A final city budget recommendation for 2010-2011 will be submitted between June and July.