Staff Ratios

Staff Ratios: This policy encourages Free Geek to minimize a tendency towards hierarchy in its work force.
List of Policies - Policy Development

This policy was approved by the staff collective at the March 23, 2007 Staff Meeting

Since Free Geek values its staff collective as a non-hierarchical structure, and since a tendency towards hierarchy could evolve at Free Geek when people are hired into positions outside the staff collective, and since those positions are nevertheless sometimes needed for the benefit of Free Geek, it is necessary to establish a workable framework for protecting the non-hierarchical nature of Free Geek's workforce while allowing positions outside the staff collective to exist.

There are five categories of workers at Free Geek that are on the Free Geek payroll:

1. Staff collective members
2. Paid interns
3. Exploratory position workers
4. Other regular non-collective workers
5. Substitutes

Whenever more than 10% of the number of hours paid for in a month are paid to substitutes, the staff collective shall review the situation an attempt to bring the percentage down to below 10%.

Whenever a substitute works 17.5 hours per week on average for more than two consecutive months, that substitute is automatically considered to be in the "other regular non-collective worker" category.

Whenever less than 60% of the workers on payroll (excluding substitutes) are staff collective members, the staff collective shall review the situation an attempt to bring the percentage above 60%.

NOTE: This policy should be reviewed from time to time. Specifically, the exact numbers and percentages are the best guess of the staff collective as to what will be useful, and we might think differently after we've tried this out for six months or a year.