July 23, 2007
Bruce Nigro, Director
Essex County Division of Welfare
18 Rector Street , Floor 9
Newark , NJ , 07102
Photographing Clients' Furniture
Dear Mr. Nigro:
If you will please recall, CWA Local 1081 wrote you the attached memorandum of July 18, 2007 entitled "Photographing Furniture Protocols" in which our Union requested "you provide our Union, and our affected members, memorialized protocols regarding the recent managerial requirement Investigators and Family Service Workers performing furniture inspections within clients' homes photograph the furniture provided the clients through the auspices of the Essex County Division of Welfare."
The following represent specific concerns and questions our Union poses to you in this regard:
- Do our Union's members have a legal right to photograph the inside of clients' homes if the latter were to protest the practice as an invasion of their privacy?
- What is the avowed purpose of our affected members photographing clients' furniture within their homes? If there is a managerial question as to the veracity of our members verifying clients' furniture receipt, why not have our Investigator members photograph the clients' furniture exclusively or perhaps have the chore carried out by employees of the Essex County Inspector General?
- There needs to be more than one camera provided each office with at least one back-up camera.
- Are our affected members fiscally responsible were a camera to malfunction or fail to function entirely or become damaged?
- The number of our affected members released at 9:00 AM from one unit to go to a client's home to photograph their agency-provided furniture is limited, thus not allowing a pair of workers from a different unit to go out in the field at the same time.
- There has yet to be developed a process whereby our affected members sign in to receive a camera and sign out to return the camera upon their return from the field.
- For what length of time will the pictures of the clients' homes be maintained by the agency?
- Will the pictures be utilized for other purposes, such as making referrals to DYFS?
Sincerely,
David H. Weiner, President
CWA Local 1081
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