Tag: workplace safety

[On 9/11/2021, the Executive Committee of AAUP–Penn issued this statement to the Office of the Provost:]

On behalf of hundreds of Penn instructors and staff who have reached out to AAUP–Penn for support, responded to our poll on safety measures, signed our colleagues’ petition, and submitted questions to the Faculty Senate that remain unanswered by administrators, we are writing to state three basic expectations for workplace safety. There is broad consensus that Penn must institute the following measures if the University expects faculty and staff to work productively and well this semester under potentially life-threatening conditions:

1. Include classrooms automatically in contact tracing, and notify instructors and staff as well as students immediately of a positive result in a classroom in which they have worked. While Penn’s Wellness Office claims that classroom time does not qualify as “close contact,” we note that instructors, for instance, in a packed discussion seminar room may not be able to distance even three feet from students, and it is not a given that all students are fully complying with mask guidelines. Spending three hours or more per week per course in an enclosed space with large groups of people talking is, despite the University’s claims, not a “low-risk” scenario for transmission; at minimum, we expect to be notified automatically if we have been exposed. Rights to medical privacy can be fully protected while also informing instructors, staff, and students that people in their classrooms have tested positive.
   
   
2. Institute and announce clear masking guidelines requiring a type of mask that provides good protection against prolonged indoor contact. In addition, provide high-quality PPE such as KN95 or N95 masks at no cost to everyone required to work or study on campus: students, faculty, staff and all categories of workers.
   
   
3. AAUP–Penn asserts the autonomy of instructors to decide on the appropriate method of instruction, taking into account both pedagogical and safety needs of all concerned. Moreover, AAUP–Penn asserts the right of all employees—faculty and staff—to work under safe conditions and to adjust teaching formats or shift to remote work if changing circumstances warrant it (as so many of us were called to do during the first outbreak of Covid). As the University seems unprepared to recognize either of these principles at present, we ask the following at a minimum:
   a) Grant immediate exemption from face-to-face teaching or from in-person work to anyone who requests it on the basis of stated medical or familial vulnerability, rather than requiring a lengthy review process or documentation that may not be easily obtainable under pandemic conditions. 
   b) Allow instructors and other employees whose work can be done remotely to do so when circumstances necessitate it. (If, for instance, a child under 12 is sent home to quarantine, no “backup” childcare options will exist for a family exposed to Covid; the University needs to recognize this fact, which could affect hundreds with unvaccinated children in schools and daycare.) While we appreciate that some Penn schools are now acknowledging (on very limited terms) the need for “interludes” of online teaching in cases where the instructor is sick or quarantined, the statements we have seen (from SAS, for example) fail to recognize what teaching entails. Not all classes can be taught on an emergency basis or for an extended time by a “substitute” in cases of illness, nor is there recognition of the amount of additional work, planning, and preparation that this would impose on both parties. The SAS guidelines of Sept. 9 also do not allow instructors to shift classes online in response to students contracting Covid unless the number of cases becomes significant. We insist that the threshold of acceptable risk to our health and to the lives of vulnerable family members should be set by those who are facing such risks. 

The three measures outlined above are, in our view, fundamental. There are many additional measures that we and our colleagues would suggest, and information that is needed, including ventilation reports on all classrooms and more detailed and frequent updates to Penn’s Covid dashboard, once the above points have been addressed. 

But the key principle at issue here bears stating directly: while our levels of comfort with the risks may vary, it should not be assumed that anyone—not faculty, building maintenance staff, graduate student instructors, office staff, cafeteria workers, librarians, RAs, etc.—has agreed to risk their lives and the lives of loved ones in order to do their jobs. We are now being asked to do that, despite the University’s downplaying of the (obviously uneven) risks, and we consequently insist that Penn take the necessary steps to address our well-founded concerns about safety at work and about the health of the community.