Message for non-members
Numerous
times our members report that non-members
tell them, I would join, but you (the association) are just are not doing
enough...
Ummm, newsflash people.
Not only are we doing more than enough, in fact we are doing more than our
share.
You who belong to NO association are the ones who are not doing enough. In
fact you are doing exactly nothing and then complaining that change is not
happening fast enough. How selfish is that?
If you want something to happen, you had better do SOMETHING to make it
possible. You can speak in front of council, attend a pension board meeting,
create an informational web site, write complaint letters to influential
people… or… join an Employee Association.
Or you can sit and do nothing but whine.
Miller laughs at you. She constantly points out how the police get what they
want because 100 percent of their department belongs to an employee
association. She knows you; she knows how short sighted many civilian
employees are and how they refuse to help themselves because it will cost
them a few bucks a month.
One voice hollering on a corner is not heard over the noise of the city,
especially not this city. But hundreds of voices chanting together can be
heard for miles. So, this brings us back to the question of, “What are YOU
going to do? Take some positive action to better your future? Or just sit on
your rump and complain?
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Civil Service Protections Under Attack!
As part of
the cluster bombing that is going on against
Dallas
City
employees, we understand that the Civil Service
reforms are steaming full speed ahead. I have looked at the time line on
this process and amazingly enough; I see no place for input by the
employees. Well, unless one
counts that lame slanted poll that was stuck up to see who knew the
difference between the functions of Human Resources and the Civil Service
department?
I can give
you the differences in a nutshell. Civil Service was implemented to reduce
favoritism and patronage in job postings and hiring. It also acts as a court
of last resort to save the city from lawsuits resulting from firings due to
inept supervisors and illegal acts by management and elected
officials.
Human
Recourses exists to implement city policy, assist the departments when they
are preparing to dismiss an employee and oversee the benefits we use to
receive. Please understand, I like and admire quite a few HR people, but as
any employee with a problem supervisor can tell you, they are not there to
assist the rank and file in any meaningful way.
Let me put
it another way. One of the arguments they are going to use for this action
is that these rules are outdated and unnecessary since there are federal and
state laws on the books that provide similar protection for workers. The
argument that they are going to ignore is that many laws and programs
EXHEMPT government and municipal employees from their jurisdiction.
Otherwise
employees would have received assistance from the Texas Workforce Commission
when our payroll was so screwed up that numerous employees where being
shortchanged on their pay week after week. You know what those employees
were told by the TWC? Hire a lawyer; we cannot file charges against an
entity of the State government.
It is also why the OSHA officials who went out to the Southside Waste
Water Treatment plant last month were unable to file any charges or even
make a report on their findings. Why? Because we municipal employees do not
fall under OSHA protections, protections that the lowest employee in the
private sector has access too.
This process
is of course being fast tracked because Mayor Miller wants to get it done
while Ted is here to do the dirty work. This way she gets to use his stature
this one last time with the council members who still support him. I have
personally heard her say that the city needs to change the rules to make it
easier to get rid of the dead wood. This of course would make it easier to
hire the ‘young and spunky.’ Seems a bit simplistic and ageist to
me.
One other
reasons that the Civil Service was put into place was to stop the ‘spoils
system’ where by government employees (us) under the influence of powerful
business or political interests apportioned money to projects not on the
basis of need, but on the basis of influence.
Without
Civil Service, we have the planning department trying to decide who
threatens their job more, the big business trying to get an exemption or the
neighborhood home owners group. I understand that some of our elected
officials do not think very highly of our collective intelligence, but I
assure you, we can add up the numbers in a situation like this. We will be
asking our employees to put their families’ livelihood on the line every
time they have to make a difficult decision.
This is only going to make working for the city less attractive than
it already has become.
Call your
council person and let them know how this is going to affect you. Alert your
family members and friends to this looming problem. Should these changes go
through, look for numerous lawsuits and scandal to follow in its foot steps.
Not to mention acceleration in the flight of skilled employees. – M. R.
Frey
Ed. Note; Recently
Councilman Oakley announced his complete support for this plan and anything
that makes it easier to fire city employees.
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Check Your
Pay Stub NOW!
Twice last
week I spoke to employees who thought
they were members of our association but were not. Somehow, their dues were
going to the TPWA instead of the Steelworkers!
Our designation on the city pay stubs is NT pub E, which is short
for
North Texas
Association of Public Employees Steelworkers #9479.
To say that
these gentlemen were upset would be an understatement, especially since one
of them had just been served with a very serious charge that he needed
assistance with.
What
happened? Well in the case of the first gentleman, it appears to be a case
of misrepresentation. He stated that he had signed up at one of the first
Steelworker rallies. As some of you may recall, TPWA and Carpenters Union
representatives showed up at these evens and were collecting cards off of
city employees with out telling them that they were NOT with the
steelworkers. We even found a
few cards where the Carpenters Union had crossed off our name and written in
their own before submitting them.
The second
case was a mistake. That gentleman was a TPWA member, who sent in a card to
cancel his membership in that group after we were chartered. Apparently,
they cancelled us from his payroll records by mistake. At least I would like
to think it was a mistake. But the fact of the matter is, many people have
been dropped or had similar mistakes made with all the problems payroll has
had this last year. Please check your stub now. We need to get this taken
care of with payroll once and for all.
If you
signed up, but dues are no longer being deducted, we need to talk to payroll
about it. And of course, if your dues are going to some other organization,
we definitely need to fix that. Call 214-760-7422 immediately.
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