Faculty Rights Tip: Can I Stop a Meeting with an Administrator if I Feel Uncomfortable?

CSU managers – even “friendly” deans who may have been former faculty colleagues of ours – typically love to avoid involving our union in their meetings with faculty. In times of both budget austerity and politically-motivated challenges to our academic freedom, their efforts to have conversations and meetings with us without our union reps present may escalate. You might have a dean you’ve been colleagues with for years who may want to have a “casual chat” with you, and it may seem harmless and collegial at the outset.

And it may be an innocuous chat, and it also may not be, which is where our Weingarten Rights enter the picture.

Have you (or someone you know) ever been called into a meeting with an administrator and you were not quite sure what the meeting was about? While in the meeting, did you realize you were being questioned or investigated about some issue for which you might be disciplined, reprimanded, or otherwise negatively affected?

If so, you are entitled to have a union representative or another advocate of your choosing with you at that meeting. We strongly urge you to exercise this right.

You can invoke your right to have an advocate with you before or during the meeting by saying: “If this discussion could in any way lead to my being disciplined or terminated, or affect my working conditions, I request that my CFA representative or another advocate of my choosing be present at this meeting.” Even if the manager is unfamiliar with our Collective Bargaining Agreement, as many transplants from non-union campuses are, you can stop the meeting immediately after making this statement, ask them to be in touch about coordinating a future meeting with your advocate present, and simply leave.

The administrator must grant the request even if it means rescheduling the meeting to a time that works for you and your advocate. The rights of represented (i.e., you are in a union) employees to bring an advocate and to have the time needed to obtain an advocate for investigatory meetings comes from the 1975 Supreme Court case, NLRB v. J. Weingarten, thus the term “Weingarten Rights.” Given the increase in investigatory meetings and vague threats to academic freedom coming from the CSU, it’s important to know about and exercise these rights now more than ever. If you are called in, clarify whether the meeting could result in discipline.

If you’ve been called into a meeting that might involve disciplinary action and need to find a CFA representative or want to learn more about your union, become active with your local CFA chapter Faculty Rights team and find your representative here.

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