(Ed. Note: this
letter was also the basis of an address to City Council on October 17,
2007. It was sent before the news about the new pay one system reached us.)
To;
Honorable Mayor and Council Members
Date: October 2, 2007
I write to you today to ask that you not remove civil service protection
for the many 311 operators working for you.
When the city leaders put Civil Service into place, it was to allow the
employees to do their jobs free of undue influences, be it from wealthy
land owners, developers and even politicians.
It concerns me that removing this layer of protection from these employees
will leave them without the security they need to accomplish their jobs
properly.
The problem with 311, as with many other departments, is short staffing or
ill trained managers. Most of your employees do what they are told to do
within their limited capabilities. A prime example are the many Code
officers that were improperly terminated for not following new rules that
management forgot to forward to them. The majority of the terminated code
enforcement employees were allowed to return to their previous jobs based
on hearings provided to them through civil service procedures. In those
cases an independent third party listened to the facts and ruled that
procedures were not adhered to by management.
At what point do we look to repair the real problem at city hall, do we
continue to outsource different sections of the city to for profit
companies, and then realize a year later realize that it now costs us more
to provide less service? This was done with our IT service, yet now in the
process of, quietly, hiring IT personnel.
Outside of civil service, an employee wrongfully terminated would have to
appeal to the same person who terminated them, doesn’t sound like a fair
shake at justice does it.
I will give you another example: I myself refused to sign off on shoddy
work only to have folks above me attempt to intimidate me into signing off
on this work with the full knowledge that it did not meet our
specifications for completion, I was transferred to another section of the
department and the department approved the project without me.
Had it not been for the protections provided to me through civil service I
can assure you I would have been wrongfully terminated.
In the end the City of Dallas paid another contractor to go back and redo
work it had already paid for, to the tune of about $15,000.00 for this one
job.
I am not only an employee I am also a citizen of this city and would like
to see us be good stewards of the city coffers.
I am hoping to hear that this is not allowed to move forward and that the
311 operators continue under civil service after the split.
If you have any questions please feel free to call me.
Ernestor Peña
President
North Texas Association of Public Employees
Steelworkers #9479
1408 N. Washington #202
Dallas , Texas 75204
Office 214-760-7422
Ms
Suhm and Council Members,
Why
are the 311 Operators and possibly even the Water Customer Service workers
having their civil service protections removed? It seems recently that
every time the city shuffles a department, amazingly, they try to stick
them in a non-civil service area. The 311/911 Operators have been laboring
under adverse conditions for a very long time. And now, when various
311/911 employees have decided to stand up and attempt to improve their
working conditions you decide to split them apart and punish them by
removing their civil service protections.
Before
being combined with the 911 operators, the 311 group were in a civil
service department. The Water Customer Service workers who are also
seemingly at risk have always been a civil service department. Why does
every personnel move or re-alignment these days seem to funnel employees
into departments that strip them of their civil service protections? Those
employees did not choose to work for a non-civil service department,
anymore than the employees of the Purchasing Department did when they were
moved several years ago and they lost their civil service rights.
Employees should not be unilaterally moved into a non-civil service
departments, nor should they have their jobs siphoned away and given to
departments that are not under civil service.
I
urge you to reconsider this move. There is no reason that the non-civil service Strategic Customer Service
group can not oversee a civil service 311 group, a Water group or indeed
any other group being targeted for a move. The City Managers office is
non-civil service and they seem to be able to monitor and direct civil
service departments just fine.
This
is just another attempt to further erode the protections that the civil
service department provides to the city’s employees. This is a threat
not only to the above employees, but also to all other civilian employee
groups. You are in essence telling all of us that we can be moved at a
whim and if we have problems that we dare to voice above a whisper, then
city management can and will punish us by moving us into an area that has
no meaningful protections or rights of appeal. The only reason to remove
civil service guidelines is to deny employees access to a fair and
equitable grievance and/or appeal process.
It
was not too long ago that the Department of Code Enforcement attempted to
wrongfully terminate a multitude of employees.
Not only did they wrongfully terminate staff; they also wrongfully
suspended and reprimanded many others.
It was only through the appeal process granted by Civil Service,
that almost all of these employees were vindicated. These were good and
valuable employees that would have been severely punished had there not
been a system to investigate and correct the errors made by upper
management. Currently 311 has
some issues that require this grievance or appeal process to
resolve.
Stripping
these employees of their civil service rights is wrong, and the
Association asks the Council to direct the City Manager to stop this
action now. We are not asking just the labor friendly Council Members, we
are asking all Council Members for the good of their City Employees to
tell the City Manager to leave civil service in place.
Copy
of this letter in .pdf form
Copy
of this letter in .doc form
Council
Meeting Audio Available
Did
you know that you can download city council meetings? Some interesting
stuff in there. Take a listen. http://www.ci.dallas.tx.us/cso/audio.shtm
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