Communication Workers of America

October 4, 2007

Bruce Nigro, Director
Essex County Division of Welfare
18 Rector Street , Floor 9
Newark , NJ , 07102

Step II Contractual Grievance
Apposite Employ of ID
Article I. Purpose
Article XLIX. Safety of Staff

Dear Mr. Nigro:

CWA Local 1081 submits this Step II Class Action Contractual Grievance to protest the inconsistent message the County is sending to our Union's members regarding the proper method the members of our Union should utilize when sliding their ID tags into their plastic case holders.

One of our Union's male FSW members informed our Union yesterday that a managerial representative stopped him and informed him that the member had his ID card in its case backwards. The managerial operative asserted that, in order to keep the red plastic slide one uses to reject the card from the holder from defacing the magnetic strip on the back of the card, which is the implement with which employees of the agency use to swipe in and out for work, employees should insert their ID cards into the holder with their photograph and other identity information facing the red sliding strip.

Below, and attached to this missive involving a matter of apparently significant import to management, please note my personal agency-issued ID picture with the ID card slid into the holder in the fashion deemed necessary by the abovementioned managerial operative on the left, and how most of our members wear their ID cards depicted on the right. It is painfully obvious that the former method of displaying one's ID card actually defeats part three of the three-part reason for wearing an agency ID card:

1. To prove you are employed by the County of Essex , Division of Welfare.

2. To provide a photograph of you as an employee of the County of Essex , Division of Welfare.

3. To prove your name as an employee of the County of Essex , Division of Welfare.

Clearly, the method of wearing one's ID card in its holder insisted upon by the above cited managerial operative to our Brother Family Service Worker results in the obscuring of the name of the agency employees acceding to the managerial operative's effusive edict.

CWA Local 1081, therefore, respectfully suggests the County of Essex seriously ponder this apparent conundrum and ultimately decide which is the more appropriate of the following three scenarios our Union has afforded management:

1. Require the agency's employees to wear their ID cards as pictured below on the left and thus make it difficult, if not impossible, for those who need to know employees' names to be able to discern them as they are obscured behind the red plastic strip.

2. Require the agency's employees to wear their ID cards as pictured below on the right and risk the possible result that the red plastic slide one uses to reject the card from the holder might indeed deface the magnetic strip on the back of the card and perhaps render it useless.

3. Scrap the Automated Time and Attendance Program entirely, go back to the agency's tried and true method of signing-in and signing out for work and have the agency's employees continue to utilize the newfangled ID cards issued them with the back of the card facing away from the red plastic slide which would have been rendered of no use anyway.

For the record, CWA Local 1081 would prefer option number three (3).

Sincerely,

David H. Weiner, President CWA Local 1081