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North Texas Association of Public Employees
Steel Workers Local 9479
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Nomination Deadline
03-14-06
March 14, 2006
is the last day that you
can nominate someone to run in this years Local #9479 election. This
is your chance to run things differently! Nominations are sought for all
positions. Many officers are retiring and plenty of positions will be
incumbent free.
Nominations
must be delivered in person in writing from members in good standing only.
To bring nominations to the office (other than the regular meeting), please
call 214-760-7422 to make arrangements. There is usually someone in the
office during the mornings, but not always.
You
can also bring them to our meeting on Tuesday, March 14th at our local
office,
Suite
411
,
3626 N. Hall St
. The
Meeting will start at
6 P.M.
Executive
Board
President,
Vice President, Financial Secretary, Treasurer, Recording Secretary
Other
Positions
Trustee
(3 positions), Grievance Co-Chair(2 positions), Guard (2 positions),
Guide
You
can get more information about what each position does by going to our web
site and following the links to our FAQ and then clicking on Bylaws. Or you
can go directly to http://cityofdallasemployees.com/codebylaws.htm
you can also call the office and ask for a paper copy to be sent to your
home.
Votes
may be cast on
Tuesday,
April 11, 2006
at our office located at
3626 N. Hall St Suite 411
. Voting will take place from
Noon
to
8 P.M.
Compensation
Overview
During
the January meeting of the Heath Benefits Committee, City Manager Mary Suhm
wanted to give us the heads up on the changes she is hoping to put into
place (after being vetted by a committee of course) sometime in July. She
told us that she wanted council to look at our overall package rather than
just having them pick away at certain parts of it. Interesting.
While there are many areas attracting attention by those who think we
are vastly over compensated, Suhm’s main interest seemed to be pushing
thru changes in the Attendance Incentive Leave (AIL) program.
The
AIL program, which awards extra vacation time for good attendance seems on
the surface to be a phenomenal success story for the city. We had the lowest
rate of sick time usage according to a 2004 study. While the average sick
time usage per worker in other private/public sectors is 30 days per year,
ours is lower than national average with an average of only 3.8 days per
year. Great huh? But wait, it gets better, not only do we have a low yearly
rate, but 30% of our employees use ZERO sick time a year. Yeah us! What is
not to love about this program?
Well,
perhaps accumulation. See, the city has to pay us for accumulated vacation
time when we leave. Even…. Gasp! If we are terminated! And many employees,
or human capital as some like to call us, can’t take all their regular
vacation time due to short staffing. So they wind up accumulating a quite a
hefty chunk of vacation time. Time that must, by law, be paid for when they
quit, retire or are terminated. Bummer that hey?
What
to do, what to do. Wait…. What if you change the awarded time to something
besides vacation time? Yeah. That would neatly side step all those pesky
labor laws that require you to pay people for accumulated vacation time.
What if you don’t call it vacation time, they don’t apply then huh. :D
What if the city called it something else…. Like Zippy Fine time perhaps?
What
benefit does the city get from changing AIL from vacation time to Zippy Fine
time you may ask? Well lots. They can cap it and make you use it or loose it
at a certain rate, perhaps even yearly. Certain FLMA laws may not apply if
the city does it right. This means that people using FLMA time will most
likely no longer get AIL. And the big kahuna advantage? Since it is Zippy
Fine time and not vacation time you can’t lump it with your vacation time
any more, so you will not be able to accumulate as much time that will have
to be paid out when you leave the city.
Great
huh? Well, okay, it’s not great for us, but you really have to look at it
from the city point of view. And from where they sit, I assure you it could
be simply wonderful.
Let’s
face it, our chances of actually benefiting from any changes coming
out of
this Compensation Overview committee are going to be about as good as the
chances of an ice cream cone surviving impact on an August sidewalk. Have
you noticed how slim employee involvement is on this committee? Benefit
enhancement suggestions offered to Suhm at the Health Benefit meeting that
would cost virtually nothing were pretty much ignored. You
may want to read the additional comments sent in by one of our members. He
Also makes some interesting observations about the proposed make up of the
committee.
Please
see 'Smoke & Mirrors' below
Rank & Yank
– Deadman’s Curve
I
have read a lot of articles on the internet about our current appraisal
system, and have found several that approach it in a neutral manner. What
most seem to agree on, including the developer of our current system Dick
Grote, is that most of the benefits occur in the first three or four years.
But as several writers and researchers point out, these gains are often
times at a price that is quite high to the overall organization.
I
doubt if most of the people who are allowing this process to continue know
it is a self defeating program. The fact that Grote himself stresses the “effective
time” element says it all. It makes you wonder if Council knows or
expects to see another system replace this one in a few years, followed by
another “Rank and Yank” cycle,
and all the turmoil and upset that it causes?
In
one online article, Grote chides his detractors by arguing against
egalitarianism, saying basically we deserve to be ranked by our betters
because god made us
unequal. I think he is a bigger fool to think that management can be
objective enough to
grade fairly. Therein lies the problem. They can't. – Disbelieving
Steelworker
Excerpt
– Cannibalization:
Almost everybody
agrees that the typical corporation has a certain number of under- and
non-performers, and that a year or two of good, fair forced ranking can weed
them out. After that, though--especially if a company is cutting its
workforce--something else happens. Former A’s will become B’s and former
B’s will become C’s. Upwardly mobile B’s will displace A’s;
recovering C’s will merely replace shaky B’s. Not the healthiest of
situations, admits Dick Grote. "I think that after about three
iterations, forced ranking loses its effectiveness," he says. "I
think the best thing for companies to do is to wait three or four years,
bring in some people from outside the company and start over again." - - Andy Meisler, Workforce Management http://www.workforce.com/archive/feature/23/47/39/index.php?ht=yank%20yank
Registration Required
SMOKE & MIRRORS -
AGAIN?
Private
industry has a product that the companies develop to sell.
This product also produces profit sharing for employees in most
cases. Salaries are generally
higher in the private sector. The
public sector has NO product, NO profit sharing, and generally lower
salaries with better benefits. This has been the practice of municipal,
county, and state governments as a way to attract and retain quality
employees. However, that no longer applies to the City of
Dallas
.
The survey by the Hay group in 2003 showed that 75% of cities survey
had better benefits than
Dallas
.
The
City Manager announced that the employee compensation package was going to
be evaluated by a committee made up of industry leaders and would lead one
to believe that employee benefits and salaries might increase.
However, when you look at the committee membership you will realize
that this is not the purpose of the committee.
The over riding purpose is to TAKE AWAY MORE BENEFITS!
The
proposed committee is made up of private industry members, only one public
sector member and one employee/retiree member.
The private industry companies chosen have one thing in common.
They have ALL eliminated employee sick time.
Most have also eliminated conventional pensions and have cash-balance
pensions (which discriminate against older workers) or 401K’s.
Texas Instruments has 24 days paid time off per year.
This includes holidays, sick time, and vacation.
Not very much is it? The
same companies have also eliminated most vacation programs.
The
briefing Human Resources presented to council contained articles that were
either very misleading and/or seemed to all have a central theme that
bolsters certain unjustly high employment perks that some people seem to
think we have.
Investigation
of one of the articles presented showed it applied to
Erie
PA
municipal workers.
However there are only 850 workers and they have not paid anything
for health benefits. How does
this very small city apply to
Dallas
?
Fact is that it doesn’t.
The
CNN Money.com article about Sam’s Clubs stated that they have affordable
insurance. However,
investigation shows that the plans offered by Sam’s Clubs are all $1000,
$3000, $5000 deductibles and the premiums are NOT that cheap.
Again what is the significance for
Dallas
with over 13,000
employees? Also presented was a
Readers Digest piece referencing
Dallas
as paying out a large
amount of money for accumulated sick time when people retire. Some of the
numbers mentioned in it seem to be suspect. They were more like the numbers
that the Mayor was erroneously spouting off a few years ago.
The article also stated that public sector employees make
higher salaries than the private sector.
This is not true, unless you consider
New York
, or
California
where taxes and salaries
are higher because of the higher cost of living in those areas.
In fact the vast majority of states the public sector salaries are
considerably lower than private industry.
This
entire exercise is nothing more than a plan to whittle away more employee
benefits to pay for big ticket projects on the backs of the employees.
This time apparently sick time and pension funds are the targets.
The City is already having recruitment problems. Why would potential
candidates apply with the city when other cities pay more and have far
better benefits? The refrain is
to improve employee morale. What
a joke! City management and the
City Council care nothing for employee morale or the employees.
One council member said that city employees should be honored to
serve the citizens of
Dallas
.
Can we be honored to serve
Dallas
citizens while earning a
living wage and having affordable benefits? Happy employees are productive
employees, but right now, the
Dallas
employees ARE NOT VERY
HAPPY! - Concerned
Steelworker
Letter
to the City Manager
- I am writing to tell you how
damaging I have found the new merit/appraisal system. Not only have the
funds allotted to the merit appraisal system been completely inadequate to
cover the costs increasing shifted to me from the city, but it is also going
to harm my future ability to get a better job.
I
am not even sure why we are using this system. Apparently one of the models for the effective use
of forced ranking was the Enron Corporation. Why is the city going
down that path?
This
system has a real risk of discriminating against older workers, (like me)
especially when they are close to retirement age. The thinking is, we
don’t need the score, the department needs to give it to someone else. So
not only do we not have the same chance at a decent raise as our co-workers,
but we are also saddled with a so-so review that we don’t want to show
when we are looking for new jobs.
This
system will leave the city vulnerable to discrimination charges from
affected protected groups. You don’t trust your managers enough to let
them do their own ranking, yet you are relying on them to enact the current
system in a way that protects the city from massive litigation? Do you see a
big problem here? I do.
This
system is a prop for bad management. After all, if we had good managers,
they wouldn’t have to be forced into this system to achieve goals. They
would instead evaluate, coach and correct their employees year-round instead
of just at evaluation time.
One
last thought, if my department lets go (or drives away) an under-performing
employee… all that means is that a good performing employee will have to
slip into that slot next time, even if they maintain their current level of
performance.
– John S.
Don’t
forget to write to Mary Suhm,
tell her your feelings on the Performance Appraisal System. You will also
want to send a copy to Councilman Blaydes
Dallas
City Hall
Mary
Suhm
1500 Marilla Street
Room 4EN
Dallas
,
Texas
75201
mary.suhm@dallascityhall.com
Dallas
City Hall
Bill Blaydes
1500 Marilla Street
Room 5FS,
Dallas
,
TX
75201
bill.blaydes@dallascityhall.com
Snipletts!
Performance
Appraisal & Lawsuits
Many
companies using or providing a Forced Ranking system will not talk about it.
Why? Lawsuits in the long haul.
While
this system done correctly can sometimes weather a lawsuit (Microsoft) Rank
and Yank is vulnerable to allegations of bias against women, minorities,
older workers, or any workers targeted by upper management. This is the most
contentious argument against forced ranking.
The
Ford Motor Company’s
forced-ranking system resulted in two class-action lawsuits alleging
discrimination on the basis of age, gender and race. They were settled to
the tune of $10.5 million and Ford stopped using forced ranking. Conoco
reached a confidential settlement with a few of its employees in 2001.
Goodyear was sued for age
discrimination and it too dropped forced ranking.
Most
forced-ranking advocates contend that lawsuit traps can be avoided by
conscientious managers and consultants. Let’s see a show of hands for
everyone who thinks the city has enough of those to pull this off correctly?
HMO
Numbers Mutate
The
City Council did not receive a
scheduled briefing on the increase in the 2006 HMO costs. Instead the
information was placed in their weekly information packages. Even if they
had noticed it, the information that they were given says the increase would
be 21%. But what wasn’t spelled out is that it was not a 21% increase of
what the employees paid, rather it was an increase of 21% for the entire
amount that both employee and city contribute. Employees have to pay an
extra 21% on their share and also the 21% increase of the city’s share.
The briefing said 21% so technically it’s
true. So technically this isn’t
considered lying…. Except perhaps by omission.
End
of year raffle Remember at the last meeting of the year you get one
raffle chance for every meeting or work session you sign in for.
Make six meetings, get six chances. So congratulations to the
members who were present at the December meeting when their names were drawn
for the gift certificates from Target, Best Buy and Chili’s.
What have
unions done for me?
The American concept of the weekend has its
roots in labor union attempts to accommodate Jewish workers who took
Saturday instead of Sunday as their Sabbath. The first five-day workweek
was instituted by a
New England
spinning mill for just this reason. Despite a boost from the Ford
Automobile company closing
their factories on Saturdays, it wasn't until 1940 that the two-day
weekend officially began nationwide.
The Time to Join is Now!
Don’t
forget about the 30 day waiting period on certain services for new members.
We don’t want anyone to miss out on assistance should they need it. The
time to join is now, so you will already be a member before any problem that
you need help with occurs.
