October 5, 2008
Bruce Nigro, Director
Essex County Division of Welfare
18 Rector Street, Floor 9
Newark, NJ, 07102
Re: Follow-Up Letter Re. Statistics
Dear Mr. Nigro:
CWA Local 1081 thanks you for your having provided our Union your affixed reply of October 1, 2008 to our appended dispatch delivered you of September 28, 2008, entitled “Statistical Reports’ Revelations Rejoinder”.
We deferentially disagree with your having ostensibly inferred from our letter that it represented a “slight” to you that you do not respond to our correspondences as we wish you would. CWA Local 1081, and its members, has always afforded you the utmost amount of respect you so richly deserve for your decades of dedicated service to the Essex County Division of Welfare and for your consummate professionalism interacting with our Union in the best interests of our members, as your titular subordinates, and the agency’s clients we all so assiduously attempt to assist.
We, however, take utterly unqualified umbrage with your baseless declaration that many times we “raise issue (sic) for the sake of having to put something into writing” and that when, in your erroneous estimation, we do so your “responses are most appropriate”.
Our attached initial epistle of August 29, 2008 regarding the subject, entitled “Statistical Reports’ Revelations”, “stalwartly stated our considerable consternation with the seriously scarce staffing levels that have existed within the Essex County Division of Welfare” and utilized facts and conclusions contained within your own report to Department of Citizen Services Director Ramos to provide proof of the righteousness of our rectitude.
The response to our correspondences we “wish” you would provide our Union and its members is that the County of Essex will appreciably accelerate its efforts to hire and deploy sufficient numbers of Family Service Workers and Clerks, and fill the long languishing vacancies for Senior Clerk and Principle Clerk, so that our agency attains complete compliance with the State of New Jersey’s mandated staffing level requirements. This “wish” is particularly pressing as the Division of Welfare assumed responsibility for the City of Newark’s General Assistance clients on July 1, 2008, accepted $2,674,955 from the state on an annual basis for managing this exigent enterprise, but has yet to hire and deploy sufficient staff to ease the added arduous caseload burden our members must bear.
Sincerely,
David H. Weiner, President
CWA Local