December
6, 1999
Tom Ammiano for Mayor
December
6, 1999
Delegates to our Local 21 San Francisco Council representing our San Francisco chapters voted
decisively to support Board of Supervisors' president Tom Ammiano in the December 14th
runoff. Reasons included a desire to staunch the collapse of merit civil service employment (no
exams, phony exams, increase of non-civil service employment and refusal to bargain
employment rights for special assistants), rampant contracting out, absolutely miserable labor
relations - City refusal to bargain issues such as health, vacations, contracting out,
telecommuting and vacations, - all of these items combined to make the case for change.
Supervisor Ammiano, on the other hand, has been a consistent supporter of city employees and
their unions. Be sure to vote.
Once upon a current time, in a City where we work every day, in a department that shall remain namelesslived a Wicked Appointment Policy.
The City where the Policy grew up had been performing fewer and fewer civil service exams. The excuses were many. "Too much trouble!" said one. "Not enough time!" said another. The fewer civil service exams that happened, the harder it became for the people in the City to hire civil servants. Everyone was very unhappy.
So new civil service appointment practices began to spring up. Provisional appointments. Temporary appointments. Rule of the List. Registries. All of these practices were designed to hire without performing those pesky exams. At first, it was very exciting. The people in the City thought that maybe they had figured out a way to hire civil servants that worked.
But after a while, the people in the City began to realize that there were troubles lurking behind the "streamlined" appointment practices. Without exams to test job applicants fairly, sometimes people were hired (or not hired) for reasons that had nothing to do with their ability to do the job. It became harder and harder to count on hiring and promoting employees based on merit.
It was about this time that the Wicked Appointment Policy appeared in one of the City's departments. The workers in the department had allowed management to use Rule of the List, but only because management promised to hire fairly and to make the growing number of provisional employees permanent. The department created panels to interview applicants, and rank them according to criteria about how well each applicant could do the job.
But then, the Department Director decided that he really just wanted to hire the applicants he wanted. He still had panels interview and rank applicants, but then he would ignore the panel rankings and hire whomever he wanted. It wasn't that chosen applicants were so very bad, but - with the panel's rankings ignored - no one understood the reasons it happened. The process was shrouded in secrecy. Applicants felt sad. Panelists felt used. The workers in the department felt scared. Morale plummeted. The Wicked Appointment Policy began haunting every one of the department's hirings.
Because this story is true, we don't know the ending yet.
Could the people of the City live happily ever after? Many of the City employees see that wicked appointment policies are haunting their departments, too. More and more of those people are working with their unions to vanquish the wicked policies and to make fair appointment processes reign over the City. The more people that join together in the struggle for fair appointment processes, the more likely that this story will have a happy ending. (To be continued)
Parks/Open Space & Bonds: PATH TO CONTRACTING OUT NARROWED
The Recreation and Parks Department ("RecPark") may get a big financial boost from San Francisco voters in 2000, and we have moved to assure that City employees - not just private consultants - will be among the beneficiaries.
Two initiatives, a $100 million bond to help rebuild city parks, and a charter amendment called the Park, Recreation and Open Space Fund, will be on the ballot in the March election. The charter amendment includes many provisions that our union supports - a steady dedication of funds, a requirement that the department create five-year plans to be updated annually - but the "Capital Projects" section looked like it could hurt our members. We got involved, and helped make some very positive changes.
Background
Historically RecPark has utilized landscape architects, architects, engineers, project managers, and a whole host of support services provided by the Department of Public Works (DPW). Paired with that, DPW has had Charter-mandated authority to prepare, award and manage all contracts for RecPark capital projects.
The "Capital Projects" section of the Open Space Fund amendment as written would make changes that seem to lay the groundwork for contracting out. RecPark would be given authority to award and manage its own contracts for capital projects, which opens the door for circumventing DPW design professionals in favor of consultants. The proposed amendment's language was also unclear about RecPark's obligation to follow City requirements on contracting out in terms of union notification and approval by the Civil Service Commission.
Union Action Results in Positive Change
Upon learning about the troublesome language of the Open Space Fund, union staffer Leslie Abbott worked with landscape architects John Thomas and Sherman Hom, and architect and Local 21 Executive Vice President Howard Wong to analyze its implications, and propose alternatives. We sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors and followed up with calls and visits. Brad Benson, Mike Farrah, and John Henry Pearce - all Supervisors' Aides - were helpful in bringing all of the interested parties together and hammering out solutions. It all culminated in a very successful meeting with Steve Kawa of the Mayor's office; Mike Farrah of Supervisor Gavin Newsom's office; Mariam Morley of the City Attorney's office; Mark Primeau, Harlan Kelly and Gary Hoy of DPW; Joel Robinson and Elizabeth Goldstein of RecPark; Isabel Wade of the Neighborhood Parks Council; and John Thomas, Howard Wong, Leslie Abbott, David Novogrodsky and union lawyer Duane Reno for our union. A number of clarifications to the amendment's language were agreed upon, all of which address the threat of contracting out.
A legislative record is being created to clarify the intent of the charter amendment, including language in the official "ballot simplification" and Board of Supervisor's ballot argument in favor of the amendment, both of which appear in the voters' Pamphlet. The clarifying language will be codified in the subsequent Implementation Ordinance that will be a companion to the Amendment. Key provisions include a requirement that RecPark and DPW establish a joint committee to develop a capital implementation program, to be approved by both Departments and a reiteration that RecPark's contracting will be subject to Charter Section 10.104 and to requirements in the Local 21 memorandum of agreement, in which personal services contracts must be noticed to our union and approved by the Civil Service Commission.
It should be noted that critical to our success was our alliance with the Department of Public Works on the one hand and community-based Open Space advocates on the other.
