Communication Workers of America

October 12, 2007

Anibal Ramos, Director
Essex County Division of Welfare
18 Rector Street , Floor 9
Newark , NJ , 07102

Step III Class Action Contractual Grievance
Phone Call Pilot Program(s)
Article I. Purpose
Article VII. Discipline.
Article XXV. Non-Discrimination
Article XXI. Title Classifications

Dear Mr. Ramos:

CWA Local 1081 submits this Step III Class Action Contractual Grievance on behalf of our Family Service Worker members assigned to all of those offices of the Essex County Division of Welfare who have been obliged to take part in a "Phone Call Pilot" that stipulates "Each worker must log all telephone inquiries daily as outlined on the form (log)." The brevity, and lack of intellectual interaction, of Director Nigro's attached disrespectful Step II Class Action Contractual Grievance denial response of October 9, 2007 is indicative of the disdain he at times holds for our members, and their Union, and our valid collective constructive concerns about the optimal services we seek to provide our clients. Inasmuch as Mr. Nigro has not been a caseworker for some thirty (30) some years dealing directly with clients, perhaps he should take more seriously the questions, concerns and suggestions of those who do that work now and who responsibly are articulating their experiences through their Union.

As you are aware, our Union has never been personally averse to maintaining our own copious and meticulously maintained records of our activities effectuated on behalf of our members and the community. I have personally utilized and maintained notebooks in which I've noted virtually every telephone call, from all sources and every disciplinary hearing, grievance hearing, managerial meeting, community committee meeting, etc. for the past twenty-seven years as president of CWA Local 1081. However, as heavy a "caseload" I have maintained for so many years with my myriad and unending duties to our Union's members, the agency and it's clients and the community, it is not comparable to our FSW members' caseloads and responsibilities for I don't work shorthanded staff- wise and I'm sufficiently passionate (or mad) to work some eighty (80) hours per week.

Over the past several years, particularly with the inception of voicemail within the agency (a program our Union long fought to have implemented over many years out of our concern that clients' calls are returned), CWA Local 1081 has urged our members, particularly the FSW's, to keep their own notebook of important client calls and troubling interactions between clients and managers alike.

Will the "Phone Call Pilot", will it be performed in the same manner within each of the agency's offices? The memorandum of October 4, 2007 from OCSE ASFS Yvonne Cooper with its attached "Client Phone Inquiry Log" is obviously a manual system while our Union has been informed that at least one other office plans to have its FSW's keep such a log on their computer on a program upon which they've yet to be trained. While the latter seems more logical if not still untenable and disruptive to the completion of our members' copious workloads, and as it more readily facilitates the compilation of statistics gleaned from the FSW's electronically submitted logs, the disparity between office methods and the lack of sufficient software training is troublesome to our Union for their inequity and inconsistency.

The resolution CWA Local 1081 respectfully demands to this grievance consists of the following:

1. Management shall meet with our Union, such as within the context of what contractually are supposed to be monthly Work Practices meetings (but not exclusively to that particular venue), and discuss the impetus and merit of the phone call pilot program(s) as well as the "Utilizing FSW's as Clerk/Telephone Operators" pilot program.

2. Management shall, if it no doubt insists upon moving forward with its pilot program(s), note the deleterious effects such labor-intensive record keeping may likely have upon the affected FSW's and their already excessive caseloads and the quality and timeliness of the services they will then be able to afford their clients.

3. Prospectively, management will find it prudent to discuss such planning with possible far-reaching ramifications upon the agency with CWA Local 1081 in order to attempt to be in compliance with Article I. Purpose of our contract which stipulates "The purpose of this Agreement is to memorialize and to set forth herein the basic Agreement covering the terms and conditions of employment to be observed between the parties hereto in order to foster good employer-employee relations."

Sincerely,

David H. Weiner, President, CWA Local 1081

C: Bruce Nigro