Your Wages: Work out of Class and Reclassifications
For many of us, the scope of our job at OHSU stays more or less the same, but there may be times that your manager assigns work to you that is significantly different than your regular job. Do you know that you’re entitled to a pay differential when that happens? Do you know that if your job has evolved and your duties no longer match your position description, you have the right to request a job reclassification?
Many of us have probably experienced at least some degree of “job creep,” where our duties slowly change from what they were upon hire, so it’s worth it to make sure your official job description accurately reflects your day-to-day work.
Work out of Class
In order to meet operational needs, the employer may assign duties to employees that are outside of their usual scope of work; the employer is responsible for identifying these job duties in writing. In these cases, these employees would receive a work-out-of-classification pay differential of at least 4%. WOC pay is different from a reclassification — it is meant to satisfy short-term and intermediate operational needs by temporarily paying employees more for doing a higher level of work.
More information on work out of class can be found in Article 10.10 of our contract.
Reclassifications
There are also times when an employee may wish to be reclassified into a new job classification altogether due to long-term changes to their scope of work. In these cases, the reclassification procedure, summarized below, is initiated by the employee.
The employee submits the reclassification request to their manager with the appropriate documentation, including the reclassification request form, current and proposed position descriptions and an updated résumé/application.
The manager must respond to the employee in writing within 30 days of the request:
If the manager approves the request, then the manager must submit the classification/reclassification request to HR Compensation within 30 days of the approval.
If the manager denies the request, then the employee may appeal the decision to HR Compensation within 30 days of the denial.
If the employee wishes to appeal the decision, they must file a grievance within 14 days of getting a response from HR Compensation.
If the reclassification request is found to be appropriate after the grievance, the reclassification will take effect the pay period immediately following the receipt of the request in HR.
Be sure to check out the “Member Reclassification Process” tip sheet, which describes the above steps in greater detail and provides a list of required and recommended documents to have prepared.
The reclassification process can be lengthy, and it can sometimes feel like an uphill battle; however, Local 328 encourages employees to take steps to best advocate for themselves in whatever job they are in.
It is vital that employees keep track of the above timelines and feel empowered to follow up with their managers or HR Compensation for updates on where they are in the evaluation process. If you have gone through the first two steps of the process, or if management has failed to meet timelines, contact the Oregon AFSCME SMART Center to arrange assistance from a steward or staff representative.
More information on reclassifications can be found in Article 21.2 of our contract.
Read “Your Wages: Pay-Range Adjustments and the Market-Based Wage Committee” here.