Quelab Disciplinary Action and Automatic Grievance Policy

Date: 03 October 2016

Author(s): Craig Goldsmith, Lissa Knudsen

This document is an addendum to the Quelab grievance policy. It provides a method for initiating disciplinary actions by Quelab officers and automatically generating a subsequent grievance to be heard by the Quelab Board of Directors.

• Member – any member whose dues are paid in full at the time of the complaint or proceedings or a Director whose term has not expired. Members include Officers as defined below as well as Directors.
• Visitor – any former member or visitor to the space.
• Directors, Board– the current serving members of the Quelab Board of Directors.
• Officer – any Quelab officer or area captain who has been appointed by the Directors (which also includes the volunteer members of the Tech Group)
• President – the current President of Quelab as outlined in the Quelab by-laws.
• Inclusivity and Grievance Policy

The goal of the policy shall be to give Officers the authority and autonomy to quickly and authoritatively handle conflicts, violations of Quelab policies, and abusive or offensive behavior by members, while simultaneously providing concrete assurance to the member(s) and officer(s) involved that the issue will be be revisited with a final resolution to be determined by the Directors acting in an impartial capacity under the existing Grievance Policy:.

All officers shall have the ability and right to immediately, and without question, initiate a disciplinary action against a member or visitor when that person’s infraction occurs within their area of supervision. Additionally, officers may immediately initiate an action outside their area of supervision if the nature of the infraction is not directly related to an area at Quelab, but rather falls within the scope of any general policy (e.g. Anti-Harassment, Freedom of Expression, etc., see below).

This may include – but is not limited to –:

• immediate suspension of area or equipment privileges
• immediate suspension of digital privileges (e.g. discussion boards, wikis, email lists, use of computers or internet access, etc)
• immediate ejection from the space
• immediate suspension of membership.

Officers may take such actions against members and visitors whenever they deem an infraction of policy, procedure and/or safety rules has occurred, or if the member has violated Quelab’s Inclusivity and Anti-Harassment Policy, Freedom Of Expression Policy, Weapons Policy or Membership Code of Conduct, as well as any other policies or rules that may be in place at the time of the infraction.

The member or visitor is expected to comply with the officer’s action or face immediate suspension of access to the space until the Grievance has been resolved (see below).

1. Officer shall inform the member or visitor verbally of the nature of infraction and the action to be taken.
2. Officer shall file a written report within 3 hours which includes the name(s) of the member(s) or visitor(s) involved, the date and time of the infraction, the nature of the infraction(s), and the action taken.
3. The written report shall immediately be sent to the member or visitor (when possible), the President and the Directors. The transmission of the written report shall start the clock on the current Grievance Policy
4. The President shall communicate with the Officer(s) and member(s) or visitor(s) involved to ensure that all the relevant details are available to both the President and the Directors.
5. The President may, at her or his discretion, attempt to mediate between the officer(s) and member(s) or visitor(s) involved. Either party may refuse to enter into mediation. If mediation results in a satisfactory outcome to the President, the officer(s) and the member(s) or visitor(s) before the Directors have formally taken up the grievance, the matter will be considered closed and the Directors will take no further action.

The member’s or visitor’s infraction and the resulting action by the officer(s) shall, as a whole, be considered a formal grievance, to be resolved by the Directors under the existing Grievance Policy. As of this writing, that Policy requires a written response from the Board within two days that acknowledges the grievance, and that the grievance will be discussed in a special meeting of the Directors (as described in the Quelab By-laws, Article 4, Section 9) within sixty (60) days. As per the grievance policy, the Directors may, at their discretion, keep the proceedings of grievance discussions private, but every effort will be made to keep these proceedings open to the general membership, whenever possible.

Use either of these methods to gather the information to file a grievance, in either hard copy or use the online form.

• Printable Grievance Form (.pdf file - Use this form to gather the information needed to file a grievance)
• Online Google Form to start a grievance