– By Kerry Graber and Debbie Brookman
The Union Management Communications Committee (UMCC) convened in January with five primary agenda items to discuss, and two items added at the beginning of the meeting. The following were present:
Ecology Management: Polly Zehm, Corinna McElfish, Amy Heller, Chris Parsons, Pat McLain; Ted Sturdevant attended the last half hour.
Ecology Representatives for WFSE: Kerry Graber - chair, Kurt Unger, Charles San Juan, Scott Mallery, Shara Trantum, Kathy Conaway, Roger Johnson, Kasey Ignac, Sally Lawrence, Debbie Brookman
1. Hiring Practices – Employee concerns were raised about a number of hiring practices that are unfair, and create the perception of the system being manipulated to favor certain employees over others. Examples of changes in past practices were discussed. There were certain practices, such as announcing position openings consistently by internet, which are now not being done.
We asked for more transparency, for jobs to continue to be posted on the intranet, and for recruitments to be as broad as possible.
Chris replied that they’ve been trying to fix the problem of rampant reallocations rather than promotions. They have been having recruitments that limit opportunity to within the section to avoid budget issues and/or layoffs. Ecology is trying to create a process that allows promotional opportunities. He agreed that they also like to open recruitments as wide as possible – agency wide. But, circumstances don’t allow it if it requires an alternate position in the program to be abolished. (For example, if the person awarded the promotion will have their position abolished “behind them.”)
Amy feels the contract provides the ability to limit recruitment. She agreed with Chris that they do prefer to have broad recruitment but it is not always possible. Chris has been emphasizing to program managers that there are a lot of tools out there so that overuse of reallocations should be reduced.
Chris will let Debbie know if there are any changes to hiring processes between now and the next UMCC.
2. Budget Ad Hoc – Scott thanked management for sitting down with us over the last few months to discuss budget related issues in the wake of the last reduction-in-force (RIF). The remaining issues:
a. Feedback on WMS numbers
b. Priorities and workload
c. Positions vs. FTE’s – which numbers are correct?
d. Funded vacancies – Where are they? How are they being filled? How are they funded?
Amy and Chris want to sunset the adhoc committee and instead talk about budget at the Statewide UMCC. They are willing to meet more frequently, i.e. monthly, and to allow an additional person to attend (Scott, as a resource). The union could also adjust the participation and agenda at specific meetings where the budget will be discussed more extensively.
Kerry expressed concerns about leaving out the people on the budget adhoc that are fully engaged in the topic, and burdening the UMCC with this potentially time consuming agenda that might dominate over other employee issues. Also meeting more often is difficult given scheduling challenges. We agreed to take this to our leadership group and the adhoc committee.
(Note: The next UMCC meeting could not be scheduled until March because the video conferencing system would not be available until then.)
3. Budget Update – Pat McLain explained there’s not much that’s new since the last updates that have gone out to all staff. Ecology’s internet page has a budget snapshot available.
Kerry asked about revenue options and what the agency is doing in that direction. Pat explained that they’ve created a table of all fees and an estimation of how much of the work is actually paid for by the fee for the Office of Financial Management. The legislature has been asking for information on fees, too. The governor has not officially taken a position on increasing revenue and Ecology has not been asked for specific revenue packages. A few fee adjustments have been proposed.
Given this, a lot of the internal focus in on the ’11-13 biennium – we need a supported, thoughtful package for the legislature. This spring, the agency’s strategic plan will be updated. They’ll be looking at the fund portfolio and developing a strategy for improving revenue. They’ll be looking at what should be moved to general fund, and what federal funding should be increased.
Kurt expressed concern that the Water Resources program sees the Water Quality section actively going after fees while Water Resources seems to want to give the work up to the private sector. Polly explained further the timing of the issue – whether or not to move the Water Resources program into a fee based system rather than a general fund based system.
4. Travel Limitations – For some employees avoiding unnecessary travel has worked out. In other cases employees have been compelled to travel to meetings that could have been easily attended by conference phone.
We believe employees should not attend in person if they don’t need to and that we should all challenge ourselves to travel less and attend via VTC and phone more. We’re also seeing PMT’s revert back to more frequent meetings with managers starting again to travel regularly across the state to attend in person.
We realize managers may need to travel more than line-level employees but it just doesn’t look right given the extent to which it is happening. Some employees complain that they’re being denied training opportunities and travel – there’s not much consistency program by program. The burden is not being equally shared. Kurt suggested the PMT might not need to meet as often – maybe every 6 weeks instead of monthly.
Charles made an observation that we’ve heard criticism from staff that their managers end up going to conferences in place of line staff. We’ve seen examples where the person working on the project doesn’t get to go but the manager does. It makes no sense.
Kerry also expressed the concern with out-of-state travel. There’s a lack of transparency that creates a perception by employees who feel they can’t get the travel and training they need to do their job. On the other hand, we see managers traveling to Copenhagen paid for by entities with which Ecology has a contractual relationship, an ethical concern.
Polly explained an NGO paid for the Copenhagen trip. She said was evaluated to ensure there were no ethics violations, although she did not offer any details.
Polly understands the concern the union is expressing. She thinks there will always be criticism. However, she is committed to working with managers about travel issues. She’s heard these concerns from other sources as well. She wants travel to occur when necessary and to not occur when there are less expensive options. She will continue to work with managers on management team travel. She’ll touch basis with the NWRO management team to make sure they’re sensitive to the travel issues between Bellingham and Bellevue.
Polly assured the team that she evaluates very closely any out-of-state travel requests. Most of this travel is related to the climate change governor’s executive order.
5. Communication Issues – Kerry complimented the quality of communication sent to employees on important issues. However, the timeliness of communication is occasionally a concern. For example, the print cost-tracking software was in place a few months before it was announced. This created a rumor of a “conspiracy” to collect information against staff.
Pat shared that the state auditor recently commended us for implementation of the print management program but agrees that the more information employees have, the less likely they are to think there is a conspiracy. (Ted Sturdevant was able to join the UMCC at this point in the agenda…)
6. Contracting Out - Debbie explained that we see patterns in the use of contracting-out that may be better served by building skills in-house. For example, Ecology seems to have an on-going need for facilitation. The amount of money spent on facilitation contracts is enormous. Other examples include high-level hydrogeologist modeling, community outreach, and management consulting.
Ted agreed to consider “contracting-in” when we have the talent, especially when we have such difficult budget times.
Kurt added that a lot of the work contracted out in the Water Resources program goes to consultants for the rule making processes. The issue is becoming more pronounced as we do more of this. The consultants rely on the staff that has all the program knowledge. We end up feeling that we do all the work for them but they get all the dollars. It doesn’t make sense. The need for 3rd party neutrality as the reason to hire facilitation outside the agency comes up repeatedly but it’s unfair to assume that Ecology employees can’t be objective or neutral. We are capable of listening and responding to stakeholders.
We’ve also seen a few cases where the summary of the contract provided the union for review doesn’t match up with the details of the contract and work assignment. We may be asking for more information. We’ll be paying more attention to all of this because jobs are at stake. Every dollar spent on a contract is money that could be spent on jobs in Ecology.
Ted asked for more information regarding Storm Water contracting. Scott explained that almost 1.5 million dollars in grant money was allocated to give to local governments/entities to develop strategies for low impact development (LID). Pat explained that these grants are funded through the local toxics account – the grants can only go to local entities. She explained that this statutory requirement is putting us the spot where we really can’t do the work because of how the funding is structured in the statute. Kerry pointed out to Ted that as Director we (the employees) work for him. When he’s talking to the legislature about bills that give out grants to others for our work, he needs to be looking out for his people and fighting for us too.
Ted gave us some thoughts… There are shared interests here. Growing capacity is something he thinks about. With the facilitation example, there are issues there that can’t be ignored. Sometimes there’s a concern with neutrality, in reality and in perception. If we’ve gotten into a mindset where we always default to an outside contractor for neutrality we may need to change that mindset. Capacity and appropriate skill sets are also an issue. Regarding capacity, how do we build capacity for work that is intermittent? It’s a challenge. Due to the current budget issues, we’re not in a mode of building capacity – we’re in a mode of reducing capacity.
Two key things to look at - will it be viewed as an objective process if Ecology is running it? There’s a lot of tension in the public about Ecology’s motives. The other issue is the intermittent nature of some of the work. We try to find balance.
Kerry said that we have worked on agreements on contracts that meet intermittent needs, and by agreement it hasn’t set a precedent for contracting out our work indefinitely. The point is we can work things out, even for intermittent needs as long as it is done wisely and with jobs in mind.
These issues deserve scrutiny - we are asking the agency to push back when managers ask to contract out.
Ted responded that if we can come together and have a discussion about building capacity, he has no problem keeping as much work in-house as possible.
7. Legislative lobbying (management issue) – Ted explained a need for on-going conversation about legislative priorities. Ecology employees and union membership can create a conflict with time and lobbying. We also don’t want to provide ammunition to those who look for impropriety or an appearance of inappropriate collusion.
Kerry committed to bringing this message to our union leadership group and stewards so that we all understand where the line is. We may not always agree where the line is drawn and that requires a continued discussion at the UMCC when issues arise.
Charles asked if Ted had any suggestions for how we can work more cooperatively on issues where we do have an intersection of interest. Ted did not have a quick answer but is interested in hearing ideas. ■
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