Governor signed the furlough bill; confusion reigns

Excerpted from the WFSE 4/27/10 HOTLINE: 

Gov. Chris Gregoire this afternoon (April 27) signed the furlough bill (ESSB 6503) into law. Expect bargaining on this issue.



The bill directs agencies to cut a total of $45 million in compensation costs, with $10 million coming from Washington Management Service and management-type jobs. Agencies can draw up their own plans using a number of options. If they don’t, the bill mandates 10 furlough/temporary layoff days between July 12 and June 30, 2011. Most state employees are exempt because they are in a public safety, health-related or other such position. Those making $30,000 or less can use leave time if they’re in a furlough-eligible class. In the end, only about 20 percent of state employees may even be eligible for furloughs.

    

And now we learn that where agencies do come up with an alternate plan to avoid mandatory furloughs, the governor wants all such agencies to close up shop on the same days—to avoid public confusion.

    

But clearly, the administration itself is confused.

    

This from today’s The Olympian:




“But (Budget Director Marty) Brown also acknowledged Monday that agencies and the administration have more questions than answers about how to make the furloughs work. ‘It’s lots more complicated than it would appear,’ Brown said….”

    

The governor’s team is realizing the furlough bill may end up being a costly way for the administration and legislators to say, “Let’s screw state employees even more.”

    

Here’s an excerpt from the rest of today’s story in The Olympian:



“Democratic Rep. Brendan Williams of Olympia said he thinks there is a risk the bill won’t save what it is designed to. 


“You look at the example of Oregon and they found this thing has created more problems and costs than were anticipated,’ Williams said Monday. ‘In some cases people have had to work overtime and bill overtime to make up for lost hours. It becomes an administrative nightmare because agencies are designed to be functional.’



“Williams said agencies are designed to provide services but the furloughs raise a question whether the state will stop doing laundry at veterans’ homes or perhaps will skip other work such as processing unemployment claims at the Employment Security Department.


“The Governor’s Office is aware of Oregon’s experience and concerned by it, Brown said. But he said the savings must be achieved, because Washington lawmakers reduced allocations to agencies.



"We are trying to get over the next couple weeks to see what it would take to make it work,’ Brown said. ‘If we shut this down, what are the ramifications? Does it mean the next day people have to work 10 hours? … We’re trying to be as thoughtful as we can … but it’s bumpy.’



“For instance, exempted activities are spelled out in the bill. But Brown said an exemption that protects academic or classroom activities in a community college leaves unclear how much support service must be provided to allow classes to go on.”



Ecology members are scheduled to discuss the furlough bill along with other budget concerns at Friday’s (April 30) Union Management Communications Committee.  Notes from this meeting will be posted here on our blog. 

UMCC Agenda Topics for Friday, April 30: 

• Communications From the Spills Program  
• Time Accounting – Status of Streamlining Project  
• Questions about consolidating into “shared services”  
• Budget Concerns and Furloughs 

Check with your UMCC representative to provide input or find out more. 

Check back here for postings to learn the outcome of our discussions.  ■

Should Ecology have it own local? Part 4: Creating an agency-based local - How is it done?

By Paul Pickett, Assistant Chief Steward

Some employee members of WFSE have been discussing whether Ecology should have its own agency-based Local. Over the last few months we havel explored this issue in a series of articles.

This is the fourth in a series of articles exploring an agency-based Local for Ecology. Previous articles discussed what a Local is and does, some of the trade-offs between a geographic and agency-based local, and how other agency-based Locals do business. This final article looks at process: if we wanted our own Local, how would we do it?

The fundamental requirement of creating a Local is approval by the International (AFSCME) Executive Board. The rest of the process leads to that event, based on principles of transparency and member inclusiveness. The International is most likely to approve a Local if the Council (WFSE) supports the proposal. And the Council is most likely to support the new Local if the existing Locals support the creation of a new Local. The process all starts with the members of the proposed new Local supporting the effort.

So the first step is to ensure support of members. These newsletter articles are part of the process of educating Ecology members about the issue. More information sharing and discussion is likely needed. Eventually Ecology members will need to show their support by their signatures on a petition.

By the rules, members need to petition the International. However, the logical first step is to petition the existing Local to support the new Local. So Ecology members in the Lacey building would petition Local 443 to pass a resolution in support of creating an Ecology Local.

Another step that could be included to demonstrate the support of members would be an advisory vote of members. If this course were desired, the petition could ask Local 443 to run an advisory vote of their Ecology members, and then support the new Local if the Ecology members vote in favor of it.

This process could be repeated in each of the field offices for their own geographic Local if members there wanted to join as “charter members” of the new Local. However, members in field offices could also wait until a new Local is created and later ask to be moved from their geographic Local to the agency Local.

Support of the existing Local is a key step. No formal action by WFSE would be needed. However, discussions with Council leadership would be critical to ensure that any concerns were being addressed and that they would support the decisions of Ecology members and the Locals.

If Ecology members supporting an agency Local were successful in these steps, they would be ready to submit a request to the International. Part of that submittal would be a draft Constitution and By-Laws that meet AFSCME’s requirements. Therefore, members would have to put together a process to develop these documents. A good approach may be to build off the existing Constitutions and By-Laws of other Locals, adding any unique Ecology touches that support our values. These documents would have a process of amendment included, so they don’t have to be perfect the first time around.

So finally, Ecology members would have demonstrated their support of the proposal, won support of existing Locals and WFSE leadership, and developed draft Constitution and By-Laws. They now could develop an application for a Charter for the new Local, which would include documentation of the process, and send it to the International for final approval. If all has gone well and the support is strong, AFSCME would create the new Local. The Ecology Local could then elects its officers and begin doing the Local’s business for its members.  .  ■

If you are interested in being part of the workgroup to explore Ecology forming its own Local, contact Paul Pickett, Rebekah Padgett, or Jim Wavada for more information.

March Union Management Communications Committee Report

– By Kerry Graber and Debbie Brookman

The Union Management Communications Committee (UMCC) met on March 22 in the first of on a new schedule of monthly meetings.  Meeting monthly was a suggestion from Ecology management to take up the coming budget issues and to allow more timely discussion of issues. 

Four topics of discussion were taken up at this meeting:  Communication Issues, Hiring while preparing to layoff; Overtime Eligibility Audit, and Budget

Present at the meeting:

Ecology Management: Chris Parsons – Human Resources (HR) Director, Corinna McElfish for HR, Pam Durham substituting for Amy Heller, HR labor relations, Polly Zehm, Deputy Director, and Pat McLain, Budget Manager

Ecology Representatives for WFSE: Kerry Graber –Chair and for SWRO, Marcie Mangold for CRO, Kasey Ignac for small Field Offices, Sally Lawrence for NWRO, Kathy Conaway for RFO, Kurt Unger for HQ, Scott Mallery – Resource,  Kerry Carrol - Resource, Rebecca Padgett - Resource, Joan Gallagher – WFSE, Debbie Brookman – WFSE (note taker)

1.     Communications Issues

Kerry opened the meeting with appreciation for tone of the meetings and everyone’s dedication to preparing agenda items and taking the issues seriously. We want to keep focused on exchanging information honestly and towards solving problems. We want communications to evolve to being less formal, less constricted. We’d like to be able to resolve issues without grievances and demands to bargain and use these meetings for that purpose. As we head further into difficult budget times we will need to communicate effectively.

We asked the human resource participants not to change the wording on our agendas when they are distributed to upper management because we choose our wording carefully and deliberately.

The move to electronic pay stubs – we asked for more marketing to employees of this kind of change, with multiple communications and a variety of ways so that the messages don’t get lost.

Overtime Audit – Some employees experiencing the audits or responding to information requests feel blind-sided.  Letters designating individuals as overtime eligible were bureaucratic and blunt.

Budget Communications are the exception.  Pat McLain does a great job with her budget updates. They contain the right amount of detail, and whenever we provide feedback, she is responsive. We’ve heard from our members, and share the comment, that having that information relieves stress. We’d like to see more of that. The up-coming all-staff meeting is another effort that is really appreciated.

Budget Ad Hoc Release Time – Scott Mallery, chair of the Budget Ad-Hoc committee, asked why he was the only person released to attend. The ad hoc group was starting to make some headway and develop some expertise and get into the “meat and potatoes.” We were taken aback when told that only one of us had release time to be here today.

Frustrations were expressed with the lack of detail on the budget at the program level. We want to help and provide solutions to the budget challenges we’re going to have, and to do that we need more detailed information.

Information Requests – Kerry acknowledged that we’ve made a lot of information requests so that we can better understand the issues and be articulate in our conversation with Ecology. The concern is that we often don’t hear directly that there is a problem with fulfilling an information request.  Joan shared that we don’t want to see information requests from the union treated as if they were public disclosure requests (because we have a contractual agreement on how requests should be handled that is different than public disclosure.) We have specific time frames we have to meet, the information is needed to know what our next step should be.

Chris Parsons responded to this issue – they understand there is a difference between public disclosure and Article 39.4 requests. They often receive multiple, overlapping requests from multiple sources. The requests frequently require compilation of information that is not readily available. It would help them if the requests could be coordinated by the union folks before they’re sent off to HR. It would also help if we could identify priorities – which request is most important? Which ones have time frames that must be met?

Joan believes that we can make this process more effective – for both parties. Kerry suggested we work on providing and receiving feedback. She’ll bring this issue up to the stewards group and work harder to not submit overlapping requests  In turn we  hope that HR will do better communicating back to us when there are problems – before everyone jumps to conclusions about requests.

Follow-up on issues raised at UMCC meetings – Kasey Ignac gave an example from the last UMCC meeting where we raised a concern with requiring travel from  the BFO. Kasey acknowledged that Polly made a call to the manager at the BFO and talked to him about it. According to Kasey employees are still being required to travel unnecessarily to staff meetings in NWRO and HQ.

Polly said she would talk to managers again.  She talked to them previously about the difference in perspective between management and staff about whether or not a particular meeting should be attended in person. She cares about folks not having to make that trip if it’s not necessary.

Negotiations – Kerry expressed our concern that we believe a layoff will occur. We also anticipate having supplemental contract negotiations at Ecology. Chris commented that he was not aware that this could occur at Ecology – he’d heard that it would not. Debbie explained that we are pursuing it actively, in discussions with the Labor Relations Office. Joan asked if they are opposed to this idea? No (but they don’t look very excited about it either). Kerry explained the benefits, from our perspective, to engaging in supplemental bargaining.

2.    Hiring while preparing for layoff

Reassignment as a pre-layoff tool – Chris explained that we have done this before and have to be careful not to preclude a formal layoff option for someone else. We look for duties that are funded by other sources where we can move an at-risk employee. It takes looking at the picture 3-5 months down the line. 

Ecology has done this process twice – once during the Water Quality (WQ)  layoffs and the second time with the general budget layoffs. The WQ layoffs and reassignments were very concerning to us. On the other hand, when the second round of layoffs occurred, there was much more transparency and concerns were significantly mitigated.

Educational prerequisites and hiring – We are very concerned that Ecology is making changes to requiring degrees for positions that have not required them before. It has significant impacts to layoff options for a number of Environmental Specialists (ES) who have given a lot of years to the agency. Chris responded that the timing of this is coincidental and is tied into the OT eligibility audit. There is an interest in moving towards requiring higher educational requirements for positions. However, the ES series is one where there are a lot of opportunities for flexibility and differences in specific position requirements. Chris said he would revisit the issue in relation to hiring.

It cuts both ways – it’s been helpful to employees to have a generic job class that they can grow into. Chris thinks it can hurt when it comes to things such as compensation – having a job class that requires higher level degrees can often result in higher compensation. Polly stated that it is not their intent to disadvantage employees who came up through the ranks and gained their expertise through experience rather than formal education.

Kerry explained a core concern.  Employees in positions who are at risk of reduction look to the job announcements and find they are unable to take action on it because all the posted positions have required degrees. Was this intentional? Chris stated that this was not their intent. HR asked managers if a vacant position needed a degree to accomplish the job duties. They look at the job market – do they need to be more flexible regarding a degree requirement to get the candidates they need?

Kerry Carrol explained her experience. She’s been watching the recruitments since June 2009. She’s only seen one position, an ES2, that didn’t require a degree.  Many jobs being filled were previously performed by individuals without a degree, and the position had been filled without one in past recruitments. She believes managers may be thinking that they all need to require degrees so they don’t get “stuck” with the layoff candidate who doesn’t have a degree.

Joan offered an option that recruitments have “desirable” qualifications that require degrees but to not make it an absolute requirement, precluding your existing employees from applying for the position.

Polly doesn’t think the motivation is related to Kerry Carrol’s concern. She thinks some of these issues may be resolved once they make their decisions on what direction to go on the OT audit.  (See topic #3)

Hiring Announcement Deadlines and external hiring – Scott stated a concern that jobs are not being posted, or that a lot of hiring was occurring over a very short period of time with employees denied opportunities to either apply or get hired preferentially over external candidates. We realize the contract only requires seven days posting but we’d like to see fourteen days posting.

Internal candidates are almost always going to be the most qualified candidates. In particular hiring internally avoids setting up the agency to have to layoff people who were just hired and have little seniority.

Polly is surprised to hear that we have the impression that more external recruitments took place than internal. Ecology had to hire externally in the Richland office and will have to seek hiring exemptions for that area – it’s just very difficult to hire in that office. However, almost all the other hiring was done internally. Polly said they were trying to be very attentive to making opportunities available to internal candidates and, sometimes, available to those who were on the statewide transition pool (very few candidates ended up coming from this list). From her perspective there’s been a lot of internal movement. She’s heard from those co-workers who get left holding the bag when their co-worker promotes to another position and vacancies are left open.

Scott was asked if he had data to support our assertion that all this external hiring is occurring? Scott replied that this is part of the problem – the lack of data – compounded by some information that has come out showing that vacancies were being filled.  We couldn’t really tell whether it was internal or external hiring. We may have jumped to a conclusion when the job announcements were all “open” to the public. This is an area where communications could be more effective.

Polly stated that this is a challenge, to figure out how to communicate this kind of information effectively. She said “The conversations we have at the UMCC obviously isn’t getting the job done or you wouldn’t jump to these conclusions.” She has been keeping an eye on keeping a reservoir of funded vacancies to manage the budget. She cannot guarantee we can avoid a layoff – not today and not immediately after the budget comes out – but she is doing what she can to keep the agency in a position where it can be mitigated or, hopefully, avoided. We may not agree to go to fourteen day notices but we are looking at better ways for postings and transparency. She could use our help and our trust.

Joan suggested that one possible solution is to post higher level positions for internal candidates only. Kerry suggested that Polly may also choose to respond to this during Friday’s all-staff. We try to trust in what we are told, but when employees come to us upset and with questions it is easy to begin doubting what we thought we understood.

3.    Overtime Eligibility Audit 


Chris explained some challenges they’ve run into. They have mixed units in some program areas where some positions require degrees and some do not.  In struggling to use the “learned professional” criteria provided by the U.S. Department of Labor, some end up in OT exempt positions and some end up OT eligible (for example when applying the degree requirement). Ultimately, many more employees may end up being OT eligible – at the same time acknowledging Ecology cannot afford to pay OT. 

Communication Plan - Chris shared that they have a communication plan to help employees prepare for changes as the audit progresses: 

a. Setting up on the HR website links to  “OT eligibility information” for employees, supervisors, and managers.

b. Power point presentation on the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and another one on both FSLA and the contract.

c. Quick reference guide for supervisors and managers which had originally been used but has been modified to be more understanding of the professional, OT eligible employee. 

d. Updated articles on the issue and links to the prior articles by Chris. 

e. Revised training plan for managers and supervisors on how to manage 40-hour work week employees by Chris.

Next Steps - The IT groups in the environmental programs are going to be the next to be piloted for the audit. The employees are going to be prepped before they give out any letters, including an information session for the IT group to ask questions. This will be happening soon. It will be discussed at Friday’s all staff.  Polly committed to have Amy, Joan, and Kerry meet before the IT roll-out to talk about what’s going to happen and to whom.  Chris will keep us in the loop.

Joan asked if we can preview the power-point and training curriculum before it is presented – we may have valuable feedback. Chris will send Debbie a copy.

4.    Budget 

Funded Vacancies

Do budget funded vacancies have to be reported to DOP on a monthly basis?

Pat explained that we have information on funded FTE’s and it was sent through the end of January in mid-February. They haven’t sent an update because they’re waiting for the budget to come out before redoing the work. It’s not simple data to gather, due to the complex and sometimes uncertain funding of many FTE’s They understand that we need this information to discuss layoffs and to answer questions our members have regarding what kind of opportunities they may have, if they face a layoff.

Climate Policy Group budget - Kerry raised a concern with the positions themselves. They are high level EP’s and were all hired from outside at the highest salary steps in their salary range. Polly explained that they were all hired through “open competitive” process. She’s not sure who was in the candidate pool or if internal candidates applied or met the qualifications. Polly was pressured to make them WMS positions and she wouldn’t do that. In light of the discussion on hiring, Kerry asserted that these positions are the types of jobs that should go through internal recruiting first.  Polly said there may not have been the expertise needed internally for the specialized work.

We are also concerned that the out of state travel rules don’t apply to this group. We’ve got members complaining to us that they can’t drive to Portland, and then we note that the travel budget for this policy group is  mostly for out of state. Polly explained that there is slightly better language coming on out-of-state travel for those Portland trips. However, the Western Climate initiative is required by executive order. The travel is related to that work – Janet Adair is a co-chair and is on one of the subcommittees. They just sent a request for an exception to the Office of Financial Management to allow this out-of state travel – it’s not optional. The meetings occur at least every two months and require in-person negotiations (they do not allow teleconferencing for these particular meetings).

Health of the dedicated funds – Pat explained that fund transfers occurred in State toxics, local toxics, and the litter account (there is information on this on the web page). The transfers were made a variety of ways. When the flood and litter account transfers were made, program reductions had to be made. Those reductions freed up money that was transferred to the General Fund. In the state and local toxics accounts, the operating expenditures were kept whole. During this session proposals were made to restore the fund balances for state/local toxics as originally intended

There are other funds where we primarily get fee money. In Water Quality, it comes in sporadically through the year. What is different now is we are not going to be surprised.  Keeping track of the money coming in will help us mitigate the situation so that layoffs are not necessary.

Air Quality has big fluctuations and State/Local toxics accounts are based on the price of a barrel of oil. We have to be strategic with how much margin we leave in these budgets to buffer and protect staff resources.  Overall, the accounts are in pretty good shape.

Kurt asked about the water resources bill that WFSE supported that would move the program away from being reliant on the General Fund. Can WFSE help to gain legislative support on these kinds of issues? Pat replied that they can do so, like any other interested party, but the positions need to line up with the Governor’s budget priorities. Ecology must support the Governor’s budget.

What is the agency’s position on furloughs? Pat explained the bills as currently written give agencies some flexibility, $30,000 or less earners can use vacation leave to cover the 10-days of furloughs, retirement is unaffected, and health benefits are protected if you’re a part-time employee. In the name of equity, the house has proposed applying it to positions, regardless of funding sources. Once the bill is passed Ecology will look to the Governor’s office for guidance, specifically from OFM on what direction must be taken. Currently the impact is an unspecified reduction across all fund sources. If the bill allows agencies to develop their own plans, they expect to hear from OFM what can and can’t be included in those plans.

More meetings scheduled for April and May.  The UMCC will hold more discussions with our managers on April 30 and May 26.  Reports on these meetings will be provided in future bulletins. Contact your UMCC representative to suggest discussion topics ■

Running an Agency-based local: How Parks and F&W do it.

By Paul Pickett, Assistant Chief Steward
Some employee members of WFSE have been discussing whether Ecology should have its own agency-based Local. We continue to explore this issue in a series of articles.

The previous two articles on this subject explored what a Local is and does, and some of the trade-offs between a geographic and agency-based local. To find out more about how an agency-based Local works, we invited two Presidents of state-wide Locals to Ecology for a conversation with Ecology members from Olympia, Bellevue, and Spokane.

Brian Yearout is President of Local 1466, which includes employees of the Parks and Recreation Commission. Local 1466 has about 500 members, including State Park Rangers, construction and maintenance staff, and support professionals such as clerical and environmental staff. Although many staff are based in Olympia, most are scattered around the state in over a hundred State Park job sites.

Doreen Merrill is President of Local 2753, which includes Fish Hatchery Specialist 1’s and 2’s in the State Department of Fish and Wildlife. There are about 100 staff in this local, who work in hatcheries scattered around the state. Other WDFW employees are represented by several other Locals, some of which are also state-wide.

We asked about how the Locals were organized. Brian said that his Local had a President, Vice-president, Secretary, Treasurer, 6 at-large Executive Board members, and 3 Trustees. The at-large positions are distributed 2 each to the Rangers, construction/maintenance workers, and professional support workers. Doreen’s Local has a President, Vice-president, Secretary/Treasurer, 3 at-large Executive Board members, and 3 Trustees. She noted that her VP position was vacant and that a small group of leaders were keeping the Local operating.

Both Presidents said they did not pay stipends to Local Board members. However much of their budget is spent providing travel reimbursement for Local meetings. Brian said that they rotated Local meetings around the state and paid travel for Board members, while Doreen said they offered travel for any member to attend the Local meetings. Both Locals hold four meetings per year.

Doreen said her Local had a budget of about $5,000 per year, while Brian said that his Local’s budget was about $24,000 per year. They estimated that if Ecology had its own Local its budget would probably be roughly double the budget of the Parks Local.

One of the biggest challenges of the Locals is bookkeeping of the Local’s finances. There are specific legal requirements that have to be followed to document spending and keep finances in order. The Council (WFSE) can provide help with this. This makes the Treasurer’s job very important, and a person who is good with accounting is best for this position. The job of the Local Trustees is to help the Treasurer and audit the books to keep finances in order. A third-party financial audit is also required.

Other than travel to Local meetings, the Locals spend money on: travel and per diem for union conventions and other events; food for meetings; and a Local newsletter. However, they also sometimes use funds to bring in speakers or to send members to special conferences.

Neither Brian’s nor Doreen’s Local has an office. Officers keep the records in their home, and they are passed on when new officers are elected. Brian said he had a “Presidential Briefcase” with information and records that was passed on with the position. Both emphasized the importance of keeping track of records and keeping them in order

We asked Brian and Doreen what they considered the biggest challenges of their statewide Locals. Both agreed that finding active members to be leaders, managing a group of widely-dispersed members, and keeping on top of finances were the big issues.

We discussed how they became their own Locals and what they liked about their situation. Both were formerly members of Washington Public Employees Association (WPEA), where they had their own “Chapter”. (Ecology members of WPEA used to have their own Chapter here as well.) When they switched to WFSE they were promised their own Local, and the Council helped them get the Locals organized. The Ecology members present noted that at the time when the Bargaining Unit was organized under WFSE, Ecology had been promised help to form their own Local as well.

Both Brian and Doreen seemed enthusiastic about their Locals. They appreciated the focus on their agency and the special needs of their members that an agency-based Local provided. They both offered to help Ecology organize its own Local should its members choose to go that direction.

As a result of this discussion, the Ecology members present were enthusiastic to continue exploring the possibility of an agency-based Local. An approach was developed to begin outreach to Local 443 in Olympia and to WFSE, while at the same time continuing the education and discussion among Ecology WFSE members.

If you are interested in being part of the workgroup to explore Ecology forming its own Local, contact Paul Pickett, Rebekah Padgett, or Jim Wavada for more information.■