Many University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty, staff and community members have signed an online petition asking the Office of Human Resources to release a list of changes to be included in the personnel system redesign following recent campus feedback.
UW-Madison sociology professor Sara Goldrick-Rab created the petition Tuesday morning hoping to urge the office to release the list of the changes they will make before the Faculty Senate will vote to support or deny the HR plan as a whole in a meeting Monday.
“In the interest of transparency we need to know in full what we’re voting on,” Goldrick-Rab said. “Some of the things we’ve asked for are huge and are the kinds of things that would determine if someone would vote yes or no.”
Bob Lavigna, director of Human Resources and redesign project team leader, said the office is crafting a response to the petition, but declined to comment further.
Goldrick-Rab said she thinks the petition has seen a large response, which has mainly been from staff and professors. As of Thursday evening, the petition had over 300 signatures.
According to Goldrick-Rab, it is unlikely the Faculty Senate will vote to support the redesign plan if the changes aren’t released.
“Even though we want to have this HR system, we can’t have this climate where changes are being made that the faculty is not informed about,” Goldrick-Rab said. “I think it’s our job as faculty to do this on the behalf of everyone else.”
However, Goldrick-Rab said she hopes the plan passes Monday if the changes are released.
“I think their intentions are good, I think a lot of this has been misunderstanding and a lot of it has been due to poor communication,” Goldrick-Rab said. “The petition was intended to say ‘do the right thing, we know you can.’”
