Staff Categories

In general staff means anyone who is paid by Free Geek to work at Free Geek. (Note: often when people use the term "staff" they use it as shorthand for "staff collective".)

Workers that get paid through outside agencies (i.e. paid job training programs) and volunteers (even volunteer interns and core volunteers) are not considered staff.

Collective positions

This is the group of people who are hired on a long term basis to oversee all the day to day work at Free Geek. While each member has areas of specific responsibility, each member also takes responsibility on some level for the whole thing. That is, while other staff members can say "not my department -- go bug someone else", collective members have to at least know where to direct issues, and ultimately deal with them if needed. Collective positions are salaried and come with benefits (health care, paid holidays, and vacation/sick days.)

Probationary vs. full

Collective members have a three to six month probationary period, after which they are full collective members. During the probationary period the individual and the collective need to decide if the person is a good match for the position and the collective. When figuring out how long someone has been in the collective we go by the date they were hired into the collective (not the date they gained full status).

Paid internships

Interns are staff members that work for a limited amount of time in a targeted area. These positions are aimed at people needing job skills, for example young people right out of high school or college. Interns are usually part time workers, and they usually work for about six months. Interns are paid an hourly wage.

Exploratory positions

Exploratory positions are paid positions that are set up so we can try out a new program and see if it merits a new collective position, an internship, or something else. Interns are paid an hourly wage.

Substitutes

Substitutes are people that fill in when the schedule has gaps in it due to staff members leaving, getting sick, or taking vacation or leave. There is no guarantee of work continuing or regular work. Substitutes are paid an hourly wage.

Other non-collective positions

There have been other staff positions than those listed above. For example we have had "contract workers" cover many of the duties of build coordinator, tech support coordinator, and printer coordinator in the past. These people are paid an hourly wage.

Proposed area for policy: There has been some talk about classifying any substitute who works more than a certain amount of hours in a specified amount of time as being automatically classified as a "non-collective" worker. One thought is that when a substitute is added to the regular schedule rather than being used only on an on call basis this would trigger their classification as an "other non-collective" staff member.

Ratios

How many collective members vs. interns vs. others do we hire?

Proposed area for policy: There has been some talk of describing allowable ranges of percentages for each type of position. For instance, we could say:

• that we need at least two collective positions for each intern we hire,
• that no more than 10% of the hours we pay for should go to substitutes.
• that we have a paid internship in a area, we would need to spend the same amount of time with collective position hours in that area
• that "paid internship + other non-collective members" can not exceed the amount of scheduled time from collective members in any given area. (this would not apply to Exploratory positions or substitutes.)

These efforts would be for the purpose of containing the tendency to develop a hierarchy where a small staff collective (with a lot of power) is running a much larger pool of workers.

• Collective positions
• Paid internships
• Exploratory positions
• Regularly scheduled substitutes
• Fill in Substitutes
• Other positions