Why was Short-Term disability Axed? Who benefits
from this?
As we all
know, nothing is more terrifying that getting injured and not only having to
worry about your health, but also your families financial survival.
But, this is exactly what happened to us this year.
The more I
ask around about this change, the less sense this benefit cut makes. Human
Resources argued against changing it, I don’t recall any big debates about
it in council, yet, there it was come budget time.
Do you
realize that this benefit cost less than $40.00 per year per civilian
employee? In fact with the police and fire employees included this number
comes down even more. Do you
know how much it costs to replace this benefit? Easily $120.00 per year for
a young healthy employee and between $700.00 to $800.00 per year for older
employees with pre-existing conditions. That is $700.00 to $800.00 a
year….if they can use it. And this is a big if, since there is a one year
‘waiting period’ for pre-existing conditions …and wait for it… If
they can keep it, another big if, since apparently at least one older
employee has already received a policy cancellation letter.
As Ms. De La
Garza of Human Resources pointed out to council, due to the requirement that
a person use eighty percent of their sick time and have a 30 day waiting
period we had an extremely low incident of use for this benefit. Only one
hundred and eleven people used this benefit in 2002. So the question
becomes, why make all of us buy it from a private company? How did this
really profit the city? Who
profits from this except a private insurance company?
Do you
realize that just for the civilian employees at the lowest rate of $20.00 a
month, this coverage would cost us 1.6 million dollars to replace? Over a
million and a half in passed on expenses to save the city only $281,199.00.
Or worse, since many people cannot afford this coverage with the three years
of decreased wages, they are running bare with no disability coverage.
Why? If the
money was that significant to the budget, why could they not just offer us
the continued coverage for $40.00 a year? We would be covered, they would
have the good press of keeping a needed benefit and the $281,000.00 that was
so important to the budget would
have been recovered. Heck they could have asked for it upfront and been
ahead for the year.
I think
these are questions all of us need to be asking the city as they prepare for
next years budget. I would like to see this important safety net reinstated.
I would also like to see the employees get a bit more input into benefit
changes that affect them. We have had our salary and benefits reduced for
going on four years now, and I feel that we deserve some consideration for
this sacrifice. Me? I would like several things in exchange, but I think a
big consideration is more employee input into these constant benefit
changes. I would also like less last minute changes. But what about the rest
of you? What do you want? - M.
R. Frey
Human
Resource’s report to council – See line 17 http://www.dallascityhall.com/dallas/eng/ppt/BenefitsMatrix.xls
Pension
Fund Review Committee News
Rather than
stick to its previous agree-ment with the employees, where we increased our
pension contributions in exchange for the city agreeing to put the 1999
funding solution to a citizen vote, another Pension Review Committee has
been formed.
Pension
board members Randy Stalnaker and Carla Brewer are on the committee
representing the employees and Retiree Morris Bishop, a former chairman of
the Fund’s board of trustees, is representing the retirees. Ms. Miller has
appointed Bill Quinn of A&R Invest-ments, Rusty Rose an investor, Brenda
L. Jackson an Executive vice president of Oncor and Tim Handley to represent
the city.
The newly
appointed committee met on January 14th and 15th.
Apparently most of those two meetings were spent bringing the
city appointees up to speed on the history of the plans under funding,
benefits distributed and how the pension ties into our overall benefit
package. Including what has been
recently slashed and what we are not allowed to do since we are a
municipality.
Apparently
all went smoothly except for a few things said by Mr. Benavides and his
staff which were challenged and corrected by the retirees. (Ed. Note: Hey
Ted, you gotta watch those feisty old people. They can be a tad testy.
;D ) On January 27th they
were scheduled to look over investments.
According to
reports, so far the committee members seem to be on track and have not
exhibited any signs of having a particular agenda. They did examine the
Texas Municipal Retirement System, which has a smaller payout that our
current plan does. One of the board members, Tim Hanley noted that this plan
is geared mainly towards smaller municipalities without the resources
available to larger cities such as
Dallas
.
Job
Exportation DOES affect you
I have heard a lot of
employees’ say that job exportation to foreign countries does not affect
them because they work for a municipality, and those jobs can’t
be exported. This is so
completely untrue.
The unemployed people left
behind will eventually find much lower paying jobs. Less money, less
spending, less tax dollars for the city. Also, this lowers the average
salary and benefits paid in the private sector, and we know how closely the
mayor watches that.
Also these people then become
‘under-employed’ getting jobs for less money, which makes their labor
cheaper than our own. They are hired by vendors, who then pressure the city
to outsource our city jobs to ‘save tax payers’ dollars. Which as you
know, is when the hidden costs come out, but it is too late then, the jobs
are lost to us.
Consider also, Ted Benavides
even said at a news conference that the only way the city was getting away
with treating the city employees as bad as they do right now, was that the
tight labor market gave us no other options. Therefore the city did not have
to worry about us leaving for better jobs and did not have to increase our
wages.
Lastly, just because job
exportation does not directly affect you, it does affect your family. We
have several employees who’s kids are not able to find decent jobs in this
tight economy or worse…. Had decent jobs and then got laid off, so their
jobs could be shipped to
India
or
Pakistan
.
Think
about that this November.
Problems
Payroll Problems
Payroll
Amazingly
enough the city is messing up our dues deductions process.
Go
figure, what are the odds hey? We have had several run ins with the city
over this, and unfortunately we are going to have to do it again.
What is
happening is that members are being dropped off our list in error or never
added no matter how many times we submit their cards.
While this is not unusual, I mean they mess up our oaychecks on a
regular basis, however, this is getting ridiculous.
If you
are a member who is not getting your dues properly deducted call, write or
email us. We are going to ‘chat’ with payroll, so we get this taken care
of again.
The Code Enforcement Shuffle
Scott
Newland sent a letter out to all of the papers and news services at the
beginning of the month. Since Scott retired from Code Enforcement, he is
pretty familiar with their problems. He pointed out to the media that the
problems lie deeper than a few field inspectors or one manager.
He pointed
out that no one is overjoyed to see a Code Enforcement inspector on their
doorstep. If an inspector is at
your house, it is 99% certain he or she has bad news for the owner/occupant.
Paint the house, mow the yard, get rid of the inoperable vehicle,
remove all of the items stored in the back yard, on and on.
These employees enforce over 900 ordinances in the course of their
job description. For the most
part they are verbally abused and sometimes physically threatened, robbed,
shot, and dog bit as they do their jobs.
As bad as it may sound, it is not entirely thankless.
There are neighborhood associations that appreciate what Code
Enforcement inspectors do, and there is the self-satisfaction of seeing the
improvements take place. Code Enforcement plays a key part in the
preservation of neighborhoods, especially those with historic designations.
He also
noted that Code Enforcement recently enacted a mandatory quota of achieving
400 “actions” per month. The
truth of the situation is that this is a very realistic number if it is
defined properly. He feels that
this quota is responsible, in part, for the recent accusations and promises
of termination. It is his
understanding from various Code Enforcement inspectors that no one in Code
Enforcement administration has defined what an “action” is and until
recently no two managers were following the same system.
In fact just recently, every manager in Code Enforcement was issued a
letter of counseling regarding the quota and now they may be more uniform in
their actions.
In some
instances employees turned in their monthly report and were short of the
of the
required 400 actions and were told to find more numbers.
(Managers would look bad by having an employee who did not perform
adequately) Some employees did
just that, * found * numbers and turned them in a few minutes later.
(Very bad idea) So the problem is more than a few harassed field
inspectors, it also includes the managers who pressured them to ‘fix’ it
and then forwarded the incorrect work logs.
Code Enforcement Update…
Lots of
interesting stuff going on in Code enforcement due to this incident this
week.
Assistant
Director, Cheritta Johnson has been transferred to the Sanitation Dept.
effective
Feb
4th 2004
.
The grapevine tags either Faye Williams or Ron Robinson as interim to
replace her. We will wait and
see.
Gary
Middleton has returned to Code Enforcement to manage the Walker Consent
sector.
Our
Association Representatives
Please
welcome Joe Paul Fletcher to our local. Joe will be assisting Scott Newland
in handling grievance and general office duties needed to assist our
membership.
Whereas
Scott knows the city, Joe knows the unions. He comes to us from Steelworkers
Local 6580 where he was a member for 40 years. He spent the last 20 years as
president. We look forward to
teaching Joe about the city while he keeps us on the straight and narrow as
far how unions work.
Joe
is currently working on Scott’s schedule so he can pick up tips on how the
city works, as soon as he gets up to speed ‘city wise’ Scott and he will
split shifts so that we can double our coverage.
In
addition to Scott and Joe we also have Ms. Liz Barlett who does ‘pick
up’ work for us doing the taxes and making sure we stay straight with the
state and federal government.
Ms.
Barlett lives in Rockdale
Texas
and is the local expert on union funding records. She often holds classes
for District 12 Unions on book keeping and records retention.
Something
Interesting in the paper….
This
letter was in the Dallas Morning News Letters page last month.
How about city workers?
In
yesterday's editorial, "Changing a City – Philanthropist believes in
building bridges," you rightly recognize Margaret McDermott for her $8
million contribution to the city.
How
about throwing out kudos to thousands of city of
Dallas
employees, who, due to huge
increases in insurance deductibles and
premiums, are effectively contributing thousands of dollars per year per employee to city coffers? - Thomas
Prentice, Dallas
Great
letter huh? It inspired this design…
http://www.employeeblues.com
Shirts,
mugs, clocks, mouse pads… gear for the ‘gruntled employee.
J
WHAT’S
YOUR OPINION?
