May 23, 2014
Sharon Butler, Director
Essex County Division of Welfare
18 Rector Street, Floor 9
Newark, NJ, 07102
Re: Step II Class Action Contractual Grievance
Preposterous Plan to Transfer Downtown Cases to Westside
Article I. Purpose
Article VII. Discipline
Article XXII. Health & Safety
Article XXV. Non-Discrimination
Article XLIX. Safety of Staff
Dear Ms. Butler:
CWA Local 1081 submits this Step II Class Action Contractual Grievance on behalf of all of our members assigned to the Westside Citizen Services Center to protest the County's preposterous plan to transfer all of the cases of the clients of the Downtown Citizen Service Center to the Westside Citizen Services Center. This pitiable plot is apparently being effectuated in order to logically, and necessarily, move a slew of clients' cases from the Office of Medicaid in order to lessen the number of cases and clients overrunning, and overcoming, that office:
1. The number of overdue TANF cases existing within the Downtown Citizen Services Center as of the last day of April 2014 was 307. These overdue cases will unfairly be foisted upon our members assigned to the Westside Citizen Services Center. unless a different tact is taken.
2. In 2012, the case count per worker within the Westside Citizen Services Center was between 158-165.
3. With the transfer to the Westside Citizen Services Center of the current caseload of the Downtown Citizen Services Center, the caseload per worker within the Westside Citizen Services Center will increase dramatically to between 260-270 cases. This will represent more than a 60% increase of cases each Westside Family Service Worker will have to shoulder were the troubling transfer to transpire.
The resolution CWA Local 1081 demands to this grievance consists of the following:
- The County should abandon this injudicious idea and, in its stead, heed the advice our Union had previously provided management that an appropriate number of Medicaid cases and the employees whom service them should be transferred to space available upon the fourth floor of The Riverview Office and/or upon the fifth floor of the Office of Special Services.
- Were the County to nonsensically not heed the above cited sagacious suggestion our Union had previously provided management regarding this crucial circumstance, the County shall assign an additional number of employees to the Westside Citizen Services Center commensurate with the enormous escalation of cases that the Westside office shall compulsorily absorb.
- Were the County to nonsensically not heed the above cited sagacious suggestion our Union had previously provided management regarding this crucial circumstance, the approximate 307 overdue cases now extant within the Downtown Citizen Services Center shall be completed before that offices total caseload is palmed off upon the employees of the Westside Citizen Services Center.
- The County shall hire a sufficient number of additional staff and assign them to all of our agency's short-handed offices, particularly the Office of Medicaid and Food Stamp Citizen Services Center which have both witnessed respectively an approximate 70% increase in caseload since 2007. The total staffing levels of the Essex County Division of Welfare have remained the same, or decreased, since the year 2000 with the anomaly exception of one year in 2010.
We seek a hearing in this regard.
Sincerely,
David H. Weiner, President
CWA Local 1081