February 5, 2008

 

Bruce Nigro, Director

Essex County Division of Welfare

18 Rector Street , Floor 9

Newark , NJ , 07102

 

Re: Step II Class Action Contractual Grievance

       Horizon’s Loss of Identity Information      

       Article I. Purpose

       Article XXV. Non-Discrimination

       Article XLIX. Safety of Staff

 

Dear Mr. Nigro:

CWA Local 1081 submits this Step II Class Action Contractual Grievance, on behalf of all of our adversely affected and potentially adversely affected members employed by the Essex County Division of Welfare, to protest the fact that Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield experienced a stolen a laptop computer earlier within January 2008 containing the names, Social Security numbers and other personal information of more than 300,000 of its customers.

On October 18, 2006, the Administration invited the various vendors with whom the County’s employees interact for insurance and financial services to attend a Labor/Management Roundtable meeting that included representative from the Unions representing County employees and high-ranking members of the Administration. The invitation to the vendors was made by the Administration at the behest of our Union. We had previously read, and then passed on to our members, numerous articles regarding the loss and theft of major companies’ laptops containing their customers’ sensitive personal information which could be used to facilitate identity theft.

While all of the vendors’ representatives attending the meeting emphatically asserted their respective laptop computers were totally secure, and encrypted, the latter control of immense import was apparently not in place with Horizon’s stolen laptop computer. The Administration of the County of Essex had a fiduciary, and contractual, responsibility to ensure the sensitive personal information regarding its employees entrusted to Horizon had been indeed encrypted.

 

While CWA Local 1081 lauds Essex County Office of Human Services Director Alan Abramowitz for his expeditious reaction to the report of the theft of the Horizon laptop, as witnessed by his attached memorandum of January 30, 2008 written all County employees in this regard, Horizon’s offer of a “complimentary 12-month membership” to affected customers in a credit monitoring program provides slight solace to those customers who are our Union’s members as they await a potential contravention of their personal security.

 

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

 

1. The Administration shall straight away set up a meeting of the Labor/Management Roundtable and invite representatives of Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, and all of the other vendors interacting with County employees, to review anew the companies’ respective computer security measures.
2. The Administration shall obtain immediately from Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, and share with all of the employees of the County, memorialized assurances that the company’s computerized information contained within its employees’ laptops has at last been encrypted.
3. The Administration shall obtain immediately from all of the other vendors interacting with County employees, and share with all of the employees of the County, memorialized assurances that those companies’ computerized information contained within its employees’ laptops has been encrypted.

 

We seek a hearing, in this regard.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

David H. Weiner, President

CWA Local 1081

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

C: William Marino, President & CEO, Horizon BC BS

     Lynne Buckley, CWA Representative

     Steve Weissman, Esquire