Q: Is there any recourse if a supervisor is routinely overloading employees and adding new tasks even when employees have announced that they are unable to complete their current work within the standard work week?
A: 1. You can go over the supervisor's head, to the next higher bureaucratic level, and repeat this as needed. This rarely produces results, since nobody in the hierarchy wants to admit that anything is wrong in "their shop": this would begin to call into question the whole System that has made the supervisor's supervisor the "important person" that s/he is.
2. You can seek mediation and then initiate a grievance with the Professional Advisory Committee. However, the PAC, as an arm of the administration, is an arbitrator not an advocate, and its decisions are advisory not binding. It can do little to restrain managerial incompetence and malfeasance.
3. You can take a complaint to AAP, the organization of academic professionals that is free of administrative control and dedicated to advocating and advancing the rights and interests of academic professionals. I suggest this as ultimately the most productive course.
--This month's answer provided by Ron Szoke