Prizes to be Won!!!
Membership
Contest
- Welcome to the Spring Membership drive. As spring is the traditional time
to grow, we are going to kick off our Spring Membership Drive right now.
For
every new member you sign up, your name will be put in the drawing to win a
$100.00 dollar gift certificate from Target. Also, you and the new member
will get a snazzy NTAPE ball cap. Sign up five members? You get five
chances, and five happy new members also get a ball cap.
All you have to do is get a membership form, from our website or the
back of this newsletter, get your co-worker to fill it out and then put your
name on the side of the form and send it into the office. The contest will
run from April 19 to
May 19,
2004
. The
winner will be announced in the next news letter.
Email
Roundup
– Every member who signs up for email notices will have a chance to win
their choice of either an autographed copy of Jim Hightowers new book
“Thief’s in High Places” or a Shirt and Cap. In case of emergency, it
is important that we be able to contact all members quickly. So please send
your name and email address to email@ntape.com
Suggestion
Contest – What do you think we need to do to encourage employees to
join the union? Change the ways people can sign up? Offer an incentive for
each sign up? We are looking for suggestions from our members. The top three
suggestions get
snazzy union cap and t-shirt. We will detail the suggestions at the June
meeting and vote on the top three. Duplicate suggestions will be decided by
date submitted ect... you can email your ideas to suggestions@ntape.com,
drop them off or mail them to our office.
Apprenticeship
Programs
Apparently
it has finally dawned upon the city that their current labor policies are
affecting
Dallas
’ ability to hire trained employees.
No? Really? Four years of no raises, shrinking benefits and public
officials bad mouthing us in the press have made people not want to work for
the City of
Dallas
? Gosh, what a surprise.
But… I digress.
Anyhow…
Apparently the specter of massive employee flight in the next five years is
finally being addressed… Yes, there is of course privatization to take up
the slack when no one will work for you. And yes, privatization is always a
popular option with a certain crowd. How could it not be? Lucrative
contracts being given to influential business types gaining one future
employment opportunities or political donations, all paid for by the
taxpayers…. What’s not to love?
But
the fly in the ointment here, and there is always one isn’t there? Is that
privatization almost never delivers what it promises, almost always results
in higher actual costs, decreased services, and… this is the big kicker…
there are some things that the citizens don’t want privatized. Like water.
Well there are others of course, like police, fire, emergency road repair
and trash collection, but water is the biggy.
For some reason, citizens want their water workers to respond to their
needs and concerns and be held responsible to them, rather than some
company’s profit margin and shareholders. Go figure. Possibly they know
someone who lived through the water privatization frolic in
Atlanta
. I
am told it was much fun for all concerned. A friend of mine informed me that
every day was an adventure; would today’s water be clear and appealing or
cruddy and cloudy? Let’s run to the tap and look.
Anyhow, to keep this from happening, we must hire employees.
Bit of a problem there though. Not only have many of the younger operators
quit to go to work for other cities in the last six months, but… in that
same time period only one person from our regional training school has
applied. After all, if you have invested the time and money into going to
school for a water license, where are you going to work? Not for us
apparently.
It was
suggested that possibly the only way to fill these positions was to train
our own. Hence, the apprenticeship programs are reborn. The wastewater
apprentice’s positions are already being advertised, and word is that the
purification apprenticeships will also be offered soon. This is a great
opportunity for our employees who might like to move up, but can’t afford
the time or money for training. Of
course the city could (and might) hire new employees off the street, but
that course is fraught with peril. If they hire off the street the city runs
the risk of going through the expense and trouble of training new operators
and then having them quit for better paying positions as soon as they have
their license and some experience. Not good. Possibly the better course
would be to train the people who have been here for eight or ten years and
will have too much time invested in the city to leave once their training
was completed.
Look
for apprenticeships or training programs in other areas in the upcoming
months. You may soon see jobs like survey chief-trainee and the like being
offered. All in all, an excellent way for our people to move up, and… if
all else fails, at least you will have a license to fall back on in case
your name comes up on a future
RIF
list.
And who knows, perhaps it may drive home the idea that we do need our
employees and possibly we need to treat them better. After all it is cheaper
to retain a happy employee than to replace them. – M. Frey
Health Care Shell Games
– How much do they cost ?
During
a Benefits meeting with City Manager Benavides during the budget process of
2000-2001, we were informed that the premiums for the HMO were going up by a
large percent. Having be a
participant of the HMO since the city first offered this coverage I asked
why it was going up so much. Mr.
Benavides told me during this meeting that the city was trying to force
employees out of HMOs, (the assumption at the time was they were trying to
force employees into the PPO.). And
that year the premium for a single employee in the HMO increased from $48.34
to over $93.00 a month. The next
year (2001-2002) it increased to over $111.00.
During 2000-2001, the single employees, for the first time, were
required to pay $23.00 per month for PPO coverage, and in 2001-2002 even
with a recommendation of a 0 premium for the single employee the council
decided to use insurance premiums from single employees to avoid making
budget cuts to an arts program. Not
only is the single employee being taken to the cleaner, just talk to any
married employee, who dares care about their spouse enough to want to cover
them. The only employees not
being hung out to dry are the employees with children who either do not have
spouses or do not cover them.
I
asked this question last year and will ask it again:
What does the City of
Dallas
and Insurance companies have in common?
They sell health coverage for a profit!
The following paragraphs were copied from an Auditor Report on Employee
Benefits.
The PPO Fund has shown a loss of $15.1 million in FY01 and $4.2 million in
FY02.
The
HMO Fund has shown excessive premium collection of $521,532 in
2001 and $3.4 million in 2002.
HR
uses Agency Funds (pass through funds) to manage the voluntary benefits and
HMO medical insurance plan. General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)
35.03 (2002 Miller Guide) states, “In an Agency Fund,
the
measurement focus is custodial, because the fund is not involved with
performance of governmental services. An
Agency Fund has no revenues or
expenditures and, therefore, no fund balance or need to measure the results
of operations for a period.” This fund has various expenditure and revenue
accounts. The FY02 ending balance of its expenditure was $19.1 million and
revenue was $21.8 million.
Employee
Health Benefit Operation Fund had operating expenditures of $3.3 million and
$2.7 million for FY01 and FY02 respectively; the City contributed $3.4
million in 2001 and $4.8 million in 2002 to this fund. As a result, the fund
had a budget surplus of $215,412 in 2001 and $2.1 million in 2002.
A.
Human Resource Information System (HRIS)1 personnel are being paid from the
Health Benefit Administration Fund.
In FY02, member services [Organization Code (Org) 5712] had no employees.
However, in FY03, HR budgeted $544,203 for salaries and benefits from
this Org.
Currently,
there are twelve HRIS employees paid under this Org: one Third Tier
Executive and eleven Human Resource Assistants. As shown on page E-4 of the
proposed 2004 budget, nine additional HRIS employees are anticipated.
Inclusion of these HRIS costs distorts the true cost of employee
health benefits administration and places a double expense on City
Departments: (1) the department’s budget FTE reduction due to perceived
HRIS savings and (2) the department’s increased cost allocations due to an
increase in central services. HRIS
is used for only a portion of health care administration (the enrollment and
the deductions used to pay for employee health care plans). The use of these
funds does not appear appropriate in that the function is only indirectly
concerned with health care administration.
If
you are interested in the full report or a selection of other reports you
will find enlightening go to http://www.dallascityhall.org/dallas/eng/html/city_auditor.html
on
the left side of the page you will see 2004 Audit Reports, 2003 Audit
Reports and 2002 Audit Reports. You
really should check them out. – Linda P.
We wish to extend our deepest sympathies to District 12 Staff
Representative
Seletha Hughes
on the passing of her father.
Who
is important to the happiness of the Citizens?
At
first glance, you might be tempted to say ‘not us’, but would that
really be true? Granted we have gone with out raises or merit increases
since the beginning of the decade and had numerous benefits slashed. We have
also had to endure elected officials bad mouthing us to the media and
plotting to do away with the little protection that civil service provides
us so that they may, “More easily terminate non-performing employees and
make room for the young and spunky”. But
were these the actions of the citizens? Or were the actions of others who
claim the will of the citizens in actions that were more for their benefit? Think
about all the times we come in contact with the citizens.
The
first line of defense against crime is NOT the police officer.
With the exception of crimes witnessed by officers, the first line is
the CIVILIAN employee who answers the 911 emergency phones. In fact those
operators are the first and second line, since a CIVILIAN employee is also
responsible for dispatching the call to the police officers. The same is
true for Fire and Emergency Medical crews. In fact during many accidents,
the first responders are often emergency street crews who block the road to
make it safe for the Fire, Police and
EMS
employees
to work.
During
winter storms it is CIVILIAN employees who are up all night long sanding the
streets for morning traffic. During
hard cold spells when pipes freeze and break, it is the CIVILIAN employees
who are down in the water and mud in the freezing weather to restore water
to the neighborhoods. During the spring storms our CIVILIAN crews go out in
the driving rain to check the banks of the levees and make sure clogged
drains don’t flood our neighborhoods. And during the tornado and high
winds, Streets, Park and Sanitation CIVILIAN employees are the ones who go
out to cut away the downed trees and clear the streets so that needed
equipment can get through.
And
those are just some of our emergency functions. This is why it is always so
strange when they try to privatize a function like mowing, or street repair.
You can hire a service to cut grass, but the CIVILIAN crews that do our day
to day jobs also have other duties during emergencies. I doubt very much
that the company that provides contract street sweeping has employees who
are trained and willing to come out during a tornado watch. Many of our
CIVILIAN employees also function as emergency response personnel and
therefore are very important to the safe running of our city. A fact which
often seems ignored by certain groups.
Of
course we have other, more routine jobs that we do to make the citizens
lives easier.
CIVILIAN
employees operate the purification and pumping plants. When our citizens
turn their tap on it was a CIVILIAN employee who purified and tested the
water to ensure quality before it arrived at the tap. When you see a city
vehicle, Police, Fire, Code Enforcement, Sanitation and all the rest, it is
a CIVILIAN employee who maintains those city vehicles so they can respond to
the needs of the citizens. When
there is a stray animal starving, or endangering people, a CIVILIAN employee
is sent to collect the animal and make the neighborhood safer and more
livable. – Linda P.
***************
This
is why we need to set up a committee to get our message out to the citizens.
The information committee would be in charge of contacting the media when we
have a message, organizing letters to the press and neighborhood
associations and assisting us in dispelling any mis-representations that
might pop up in the media. You know, stuff like how we can get $70,000.00
sick leave payouts and how the employees are riding the system by abusing
time before they retire. Please call, write or email to get more info on the
committee and how you can join. comments@ntape.com
Dr Paul Changes Clinic Address
Tri
City
Clinic, 565 West
Oates Suite 110,
Dallas
TX
75043
Phone
469-951-3487
Amusing
The
tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians passed on from generation to generation
says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse the best
strategy is to dismount." However in government, education, and in
corporate
America
, more advanced strategies
are often employed including:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
4. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
5. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
6. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
7. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead
horse's performance.
8. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve
the dead horse's performance.
9. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is
less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially
more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
10. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
And of course, everyone's favorite…
13.
Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position – Jackie C
April
Meeting Notes
Well
we had a fun meeting. We had many people from Code turn out this week. Go
Code. Code discussed some of the more pressing problem they are having with
quota and harassment and all. Seems funny that multiple ‘letters of
counseling” are being given out when one does not make their quota. And
surprisingly they never progress into disciplinary actions. Of course if
they did… then they would be grievable. Perhaps this is not a topic that
management want grieved?
One
member asked us to try to give some kind of advance notice when possible
that a discussion or vote on seminars might be taking place. We will try.
http://www.employeeblues.com
Shirts,
mugs, clocks, mouse pads… gear for the ‘gruntled employee.
J
WHAT’S
YOUR OPINION?
