We have successfully settled the third and final grievance arising from the reorganization of the IT Department.
APSA was able to negotiate the return to employment of long time member, Lorenzo Costantino, in a senior role as Director, Network Services. He will be returning to work on Monday, March 30, 2015.
APSA filed a grievance on behalf of Lorenzo after he was terminated from employment from the University, and his position as Director, Network Services was eliminated. The University failed to hire him into the position of Director, Infrastructure Services. It was APSA’s position that Lorenzo was entitled to the Director Infrastructure Services position, for a number of reasons including, but not limited to, the fact that the position was fundamentally the same position that he previously occupied and was terminated from, and that that Lorenzo was the very best qualified internal or external candidate for the new position; APSA was also of the view that the University significantly failed to abide by a reasonable, fair, transparent and unbiased hiring process.
With the cooperation, support and patience of the membership, APSA was able to obtain significant information, documents and evidence crucial to mounting the best possible case to reverse the University’s decision and obtain Lorenzo his Director position. APSA also uncovered documents in the process leading to arbitration that further revealed serious errors in the hiring process for Director, Infrastructure Services.
Despite denying the grievance at every stage, in the weeks and days before the hearing, the University ultimately agreed to a resolution of the dispute including the return of Lorenzo to the IT Department in a senior Director’s role, that of Director, Network Services. This very successful outcome would simply not have been possible without the dedicated support of APSA members. Needless to say APSA and Lorenzo are very pleased and satisfied with the successful resolution of this matter, and Lorenzo looks forward to returning to the IT department. The public statement from the University respecting the resolution of this dispute can be found at http://apsacentral.ca/it-staffing-announcement.
We also give a heartfelt thank you to Allan Black, Q.C. and Stephanie Mayor, of Black Gropper, whose expert advice and negotiation skills assisted in the hugely successful resolutions of all three grievances.