Los Angeles County employees should not need a
union. Unions are there to level the playing field, to convince
employers that they will suffer if they neglect to consider the
well-being of the employees when making business decisions.
Unions exist to remind bosses that employing people is an economic
exchange. They hire people in order to accomplish needed tasks.
People agree to be hired to obtain needed cash and other
benefits. Employers have always had the power to end employment
when the employee wasn't meeting his/her obiligations. Unions
make it possible for employees, working collectively, to make things
difficult for the employer who fails or refuses to be considerate of
the needs of employees.
As Los Angeles County employees, we shouldn't need that collective power, we have
Civil Service Rules
that are written with an eye to keeping things fair for each individual
employee. Fairness to employees is written into the Los Angeles County
Charter and have the force of law. A union should, for us, be as
usefull as boots on a butterfly.
It is unfortunate that rules--or
Rules--won't
work without a system in place to verify compliance. The decision to
allow each County Department to manage it's own personnel division
without a great deal of oversight for the Department of Human Resources
means we have no checks in place. We end up with Departments,
like my own, that freely violate not only Civil Service Rules, but a
variety of State and Federal Laws.
The problems are not the result of evil people doing
evil things. The problems are, for the most part, the result of
ignorance. Civil Rules can't work if the people who should be enforcing
them barely realize that they exist.
Inadequate training of a return-to-work-coordinator
results in the RTC informing an employee that, "If you're not able to
fully function, you have to stay home until you can." The employee has,
effectively, been suspended--for weeks or months-- for committing the
crime of being ill.
Inadequate training of a district director results in a
director requesting a Spanish-language sub-certification list and
skipping employees positioned in Band II in favor of bilingual
employees in Band III for jobs that don't require or pay for the
language skills that--supposedly--justified the placement.
Inadequate training of employees and an almost complete lack of oversight by the
Department of Human Resources means that Los Angeles County employees desperately need a union.
Local 660 is the
primary union within DPSS. Charged with protecting Eligibility
Supervisors, Eligibility Workers and Clerks employed by the Department,
it stands between us and total anarchy.
It should be doing more...
--TO BE CONTINUED--