The Union Management Communications Committee (UMCC) convened with representatives of the management team after seating several newly elected members. Tied headquarters representatives Charles San Juan and Kurt Unger graciously attended together with the understanding that the run-off election will be conducted to decide the tie.
Other unfilled positions were occupied by volunteers who were asked to serve as voices for their respective offices.
Also present for the meeting, all or in part, were Sally Lawrence from NWRO, Kathy Conaway and Alisa Huckaby from RFO, and Kerry Graber for SWRO. Polly Zehm, Chris Parsons, Amy Heller, Pat McLain, and Gary “Mace” Maciejewski (IT) were there representing the management team.
Inclement Weather Policy – Polly let us know that they would not be changing the policy, but had changed the decision making criteria to include more safety considerations. The new criteria will be posted on Inside Ecology.
Natural Resource Reform – Polly will be meeting with the Natural Resource Reform Cabinet on November 13 to formulate recommendations to the Governor. Polly said they are still looking at employee input. While there appears to be little enthusiasm for the most drastic option of consolidating into one giant agency, it is also not acceptable to the Governor to get a “no action” recommendation. She shared that much of this effort may get overshadowed by budget problems.
Printer Management – Members wanted assurance that the new print management software would not be used as a source for “going after” employees. Gary “Mace” Maciejewski clarified that efforts to reduce printing stems from a legislatively adopted - “paper conservation act” – climate-related goal to reduce paper use by 30% for state government. The goal deadline to achieve reduction is July 1, 2010. To meet this challenge Gary found software that provides the costs of print jobs. When you push “print” a bubble will pop up giving you the cost of the previous print job and asking whether you are sure you have to print this one. In the future they hope the software will estimate the cost of the print job you are about to send to the printer. Gary said this focus on awareness and the ability to catch errors in print decisions (oops, you didn’t mean to ask for the whole document for example), may go a long way toward meeting the required goal. Each individual will be able to look up a summary of how much they printed. (No one else, other than the administrator of the system, will be able to do this.)
We briefly discussed the status of efforts to move toward electronic record keeping. Polly said plans to buy software for electronic archiving are on hold due to budget difficulties.
WMS and Management Reductions – Polly was asked whether there had been further thought about reducing the number of managers at Ecology and increasing the minimum “span-of-control” numbers to flatten the organization. Polly said that she is continuing to look at reductions where they make sense, and urging program managers to look at this before they fill positions. A reorganization and reduction in one manager at the Richland office was pointed to as an example of this. Polly committed to looking at taking cuts in management “commensurate with staff cuts.” Other than this, a broader or systemic look is not being conducted. Polly believes the issue is getting attention with talks between the Federation (WFSE) and Department of Personnel (DOP). Chris Parsons shared that from research he found the private sector has made significant movement toward flatter organizational structures.
We continue to urge Ecology to look at the WMS band 2 level and evaluate what the agency really needs. Chris said he would be doing a profile of WMS 2 managers, and acknowledged he had committed to provide that to the budget team. He said that DOP is considering two categories within WMS, one for managing people and one for advisors.
Kerry Graber explained that members have expressed concern about program budget planners being in WMS. By placing them in WMS the potential exists for being ethically compromised. This idea was flatly rejected by Pat. Chris was quick to point out that WMS are protected by the civil service rules. The subject was dropped for now.
Budget Ad-hoc Report – Pat shared that she has been putting together a “budget 101” presentation using the budget questions posed by the committee. January is being considered for rolling this out to the rest of the agency. This might be timely with the legislative session starting. The supplemental budget has been posted on Inside Ecology. We reviewed with Pat some of the information she provided during the recent All-Staff meeting. Pat said a list of activities funded by general fund – the mandatory list – is the next deliverable to OFM.
Kurt asked why not move the Water Resources Program to a fee-based system, with an annual assessment. Washington needs to place a value on water it gives away for free. A database would have to be developed in short order. We discussed recent successful efforts by Oregon and California to shift to a fee-based system. Pat said that although this would alleviate the Water Resources Program’s reliance on the General Fund, it is only 380 million in relation to an over 1 billion budget deficit. A more serious discussion about this will likely occur in the 2011/13 biennium. Although Jay Manning has talked about a fee publicly this is a tough political environment to try to get something passed. Legislators are averse to any new revenue legislation.
Timesheet Processing – Amy Heller reported that talks have been held with IT staff on developing an interface program that would allow employees to directly enter their timesheet information and eliminate double logging. They are also looking at off-the-shelf technology. A decision on which way to go will be made in the next five weeks.
Overtime Eligibility – In anticipation of a U.S. Department of Labor audit, the agency will be reviewing previous determinations on overtime eligibility on a position-by-position basis. Amy said HR is anticipating some reversals from exempt to eligible. The evaluation primarily looks at salary level and job duties. There will be a formal notice to the union when this evaluation is complete.
Environmental Specialist Series – Chris Parsons was asked whether there has been any further work on quantifying recruitment and retention problems due to the low salaries of this series. Chris said they have put a system in place to follow up with employees who leave Ecology to help HR quantify retention problems and build some data. Chris said the agency is still supportive of efforts to gain high-cost compensation, not limited by job class, for the Bellevue office. Members will be renewing this request through the contract proposal process in hopes that compensation will be honored by the Governor and legislature in the next CBA.
Summary – The UMCC meets a minimum of three times per year under the CBA. This UMCC hopes to pursue a more frequent meeting schedule particularly as we face another tough legislative session and more budget crises. Please talk to your UMCC representative about your issues and concerns. ■
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