Apparently, the Privatization Committee’s
recommendation to eliminate Equipment Services continues.
It has been bid and is currently in the recommendation phase even
as we speak. Why this is occurring at such a rapid pace, no one can really
say for sure. Although I have
heard that it is not so much the committee as a whole that is pushing so
hard as it is one particular member. It
is unusual that there is not a phase in trial with one district, or one
section of the fleet. I am not sure that there has ever been a change of
this magnitude without some kind of pilot program to identify and work out
problems before committing the entire city to a new system.
I am a bit confused about this whole thing though.
Quite a bit of money was spent having a consultant examine Equipment
Services eighteen months ago. Apparently the consultants concluded that
the city could not get better service for the amount of money that they
were spending. Many improvement recommendations were made. None of them
apparently too earth shaking.
Of course the one recommendation acted on immediately
by the City Manager was to remove a few million from the ES budget. What
are the odds huh? Other smaller recommendations were implemented by
Equipment Services on it’s own and then…. It stopped. No phase two
implementations. Instead the ES staff was told to get a bid package ready.
One has to wonder why. One major change that was not
implemented was to have the work force concentrated on nights rather than
days. Since this is going to be a key stone item in the privatization
scheme, shouldn’t this have been done with our own people first?
Admittedly, this is not exactly a popular item, especially with the rank
and file. However I am pretty sure it was something that the supervisors
and managers really did not want to deal with!
Was it management and supervision reluctance to
working nights that stalled that change, or was the whole thing just
stopped so the privatization push could commence?
Let us think about this. When was the last time something was not
implemented because it would upset the rank and file? Did anyone even ask
the mechanics and support staff? Hummm,
move to nights or loose your job and seniority….. decisions,
decisions…. I know I would be interested to hear what if anything was
proposed to the ES mechanics and support staff and how they felt about it.
Previously Mayor Miller has said that she is not in
favor of this plan. We need to urge her and the City Council to think
about this very carefully. In no case that I can recall did privatization
actually save the money that was promised after ALL the costs were added
up. Also, the painful, disruptive and expensive lesson learned when
privatization failed in Sanitation District 4 should not be forgotten.
This could be another of one those lose-lose situations. Bad for the City
Budget, the Citizen Services and the Employees that provides them.
Mayor
Meets with Employees
Well the two most
important things that were talked about in this meeting , which was held
on Thursday, May 15th, were the Sick Time policy and Civil
Service. This is what was said at the meeting, please read it keeping in
mind that sometimes the way stuff is explained is not necessarily what the
end product looks like.
Sick
time - Sick time accrual and pay out consumed quite a bit of the time
at this meeting. Ms. Miller is in favor of a plan that would let the
CURRENT employees who have more than 720 hours receive payment at
retirement. However, the devil is in the details. Ms. Miller’s plan
would freeze accrual for current employees and not allow any accrual at
all by new employees. Everyone would go to a ‘Use it or loose it’ kind
of plan.
This means that if you
had 1000 hours of time accrued, and suffered a major illness, after you
had exhausted your ‘Use it or loose it’ sick time hours you would be
allowed to dip into your accrued sick time. However, any hours you used
from that accrual would gone forever.
So if you needed say six weeks of time from your accrual, your
banked balance would drop to 664 hours. It would never again rise to more
than 664, no matter how many more years you worked for the city.
Ms. Miller did state that she did not think
she had the votes in council to get this passed. Many members of the
audience tried to convince Ms. Miller that the current policy was cost
effective and saves the city money. It does this by reducing overtime, and
eliminating the need for the city to purchase costly short and long term
disability insurance, but she did not seem the least bit moved by their
arguments.
I asked that before ANY
changes were made to the Sick Time policy, that the City first calculate
the amount of time forfeited every payday by people who are topped out on
sick time. Ms. Miller at first confused this with the amount that people
forfeit when they retire with more than 720 hours. (quite a considerable)
I tried to explain that the forfeiture I was talking about, was the
bi-monthly forfeiture by topped out employees that the city is currently
not tracking. After a bit more confusion, she asked Mr. Benavides to
explain it to her. He explained that some long term employees top out at
1440 hours and then go years with out ever gaining another hour of sick
time. That means that each one of those employees forfeits to the city
more than two weeks pay a year! Plus of course any thing over 720 hours
when they retire. This information is not currently being tracked.
Civil
Service - Ms. Miller again floated the idea of doing away with civil
service, a thought that was greeted with a chorus of groans. The mayor
professes to not understand why this would be such a problem. As she
pointed out to us, why protect the ‘coasters’ from
RIF
’s at the expense of the ‘Young and Spunky’. She would like more
flexibility than Civil Service currently affords her.
Several reasons were given to her for NOT
getting rid of Civil Service, chief among them is that many labor laws
that protect private sector employees from misuse by their employers do
not apply to municipalities. (Can you say Osha?
Texas
Work Commission?) She was informed that Civil Service does not necessarily
protected long-term employees, and that any ‘coasters’ that may be
hanging around despite years of
RIF
could be terminated if the proper procedures where followed. A large laugh
was had by the crowd when someone pointed out that the, ‘Young and
Spunky’, don’t want to work for an organization which has not given
it’s employees a raise in three years and has actually cut their
benefits. Unfortunately, this
seems to be another area where the facts of the matter are not going to
change her opinion.
Managers
Meeting
On
Wednesday May 14th, Mr. Benavides this years budget recommendation that
will presented to city council. Items the huge increase in health care
deductibles and sick time policy were discussed. For reason that are not
totally clear budget wise, he is that current
employees keep their sick time as it is, but that new employees go
to a use or loose system.
If
this change is for budgetary reasons, How does this proposal make sense?
There will be absolutely no savings of any kind for many years. Puzzling,
since this whole uproar is supposedly over trying to money. The disturbing
part of this is that it makes current employees who have large accumulated
sick leave balances, potential targets for
RIF
.
Which is not to suggest, that this is where they expect the savings to
come in at. Mr. Benavides acknowledged that 'second class employee' ,
creation could be a problem with this plan, but he insisted that it was
necessary budget wise
Civilian
Employees, Politics and the City Charter
Continuing the work began by
Special Assistant Michael Stanley. Recently a letter was sent to members
of the Municipal and Minority Affairs. It requested that the committee
assist us in placing the matter of civilian employees being granted the
same political rights as sworn employees before City Council. Rumor has
it, this will occur soon.
Thoughts
for the Manager & Mayor
One of the things stressed at
both meetings was a was the fact that civilian employees feel that they
have sacrificed enough. This
is important, since frankly, most employees do not want to cut their pay
or benefits any more than they have already been. Also most of us are
tired of being asked to permanently ‘give up’ benefits due to
temporary budget problems.
Case in point. Service Incentive
Pay was cut due to budget problems. Really? Was there a date set up or a
economic target established for when it would he automatically
returned’? The answer to that question is no.
Also, since SIP was cut for
‘budget reasons, was there some sort of non-economic compensation given
to the employees for this sacrifice? I mean other than the, ‘Well, you
get to keep your job’ one. Again the answer to that question would he
no.
Both Mr. Benavides abd Ms.
Miller stated that they think that employee input is a much better way for
us to get to the bottom of how to deal with the budget . And both have
asked for our ideas. Good, perhaps one idea might be to find some
non-economic way of compensating us for the years of missed merits, cost
of livings and SIP cuts we have already suffered. This should be done
BEFORE before we go into this next round of cuts.
Health
Insurance Deductibles may rise to $1000.00 per person this year
$$$$$$$$$$$
Delegate
Selection Problems
As most of you know, during a
recent radio interview, Ms. Miller had recently stated that she wanted to
put an end to 11th-hour budget battles at City Hall. She planed to begin
budget discussions earlier and she pledged to seek out city employees’
ideas for addressing a looming shortfall.
As part of that pledge, she
requested input from two employees from each department. Monday the 12th
the departments were told these employees would be peer selected in a very
quickly held election.
The election was to be held in
the same manner that Pension Board Elections are done. Each employee was
to be given the opportunity to nominate who they thought should represent
them. Then once the nominations were completed, everyone would then get a
chance to vote for the nominee of their choice.
Unfortunately, this did not
happen. Some departments with several branches merely selected the top two
nominees, without giving everyone a chance to vote on the choices. Some
departments didn’t even do that. Their employees had no idea that the
election was taking place, and had no input into choosing their
representative.
Now granted there was not enough
time for the employees to get together and plan a strategy, which may or
may not have been the idea, but everyone should have been chosen using the
same method. It remains to be
seen if this meeting was a true request for input or merely a ‘tell me
what you want to cut’ exercise, but still all employees should have been
allowed to vote.
Roy Robinson has received
several complaints from Steelworkers that he will be following up on.
The
View from Code Enforcement
Has unfortunately changed again.
The inspection staff has now been assigned quotas by
administration. The problem
with quotas is that the staff is forced to create cases to achieve a
statistic for administration. This
is an inherently flawed process because inevitably, cases will be created
and closed solely for the purpose of garnering numbers, not because a
violation exists. Severe
penalties have been promised for those who do not achieve the quota.
It is not enough that we now
have bogeys, but now premises inspectors are being assigned violations
outside their enforcement authority. Premises
inspectors are not authorized or trained in the enforcement of chapter 51A
or Chapter 27 of the Dallas City Code.
These codes deals with the more complicated issues relating to
zoning and living/housing standards, yet Code Enforcement management not
only assigns these cases, but allows the inspectors charged with enforcing
the code to send premises inspectors to do their work for them.
What this amounts to is zero compensation for a $10 per hour
inspector doing $18 per hour work. As
one wit quipped, “The beatings will continue until morale improves!”
Ed.
Note: It has also been reported that some Code Inspector Supervisors
forbid turning in defective vehicle’s to EBS without their express
permission, no matter how serious the problem.
This is surely a TOTAL misunderstanding, which we will be
requesting clarification on. Since no supervisor would or should insist
that an inspector continue to drive a dangerous vehicle.
Retirement
benefits Update
Last
month we learned about not taking our retirement benefits for granted.
Especially not if we are municipal employees in
Texas
.
Well there is some good news here, thanks to the efforts of many,
including our very own Steelworker
International representatives. The bill to protect Texas public
employees, retirees, and survivors from having their pension benefits
reduced or eliminated at the whim of the Texas Legislature or City
government, has passed in the Texas
House of Representatives. It now goes to the State Senate.
Now for the not so good
news. We still need to convince the Senate that it should be passed. Please
do not delay in contacting senator to seek their support in passing
this bill. You may also want
to enlist the support of your families and neighbors.
Contact information for
the members of the Senate State Affairs Committee are:
The Honorable Bill Ratliff
The Honorable Todd Staples
The Honorable Kenneth Armbrister
The Honorable Robert Duncan
The Honorable Rodney Ellis
The Honorable
Troy
Fraser
The Honorable Chris Harris
The Honorable Frank Madina
The Honorable Jane Nelson
All of these Senators can be contacted at
the following address:
P.O. Box
12068
Capitol Station
Austin
,
Texas
78711
To senator go to the
internet and look up the website: www.house.state.tx.us
, click on the “members” icon and look on the right side of the
webpage. You will find a box
to enter your home address, which will allow you to identify your
representatives. Get
involved, please write your senator in
Austin
seeking their support for bill
SJR 38.
City
Charter Changes
There are two troubling
changes for this years charter election.
First is a change that
would do away with civilian employees in the council and mayors office. If
changed, the new employees would work at the whim of the councilperson or
mayor who hired them. What kind of bad idea is this? Those people would
have no idea how the city worked, no vested interest in making sure that
rules and procedures were followed and no job protection what so ever.
Second is an attempt to change the way the City Manager is fired. Under
the current method takes a ¾ vote, if changed it would only require a
simple majority. This would leave the city managers even more vulnerable
to political pressure than they are now. Bad ideas both.
