Employee grievance at Boone Air Force Base child development center

Public Administration

The Boone Air Force Base is a large education and training facility that has a child development center that provides federally subsidized childcare for military personnel. The center employs two different types of employees, those in civil service positions and those in non-appropriated fund positions. The civil service positions are the better of the two and are provided protections that the non-appropriated employees are not given. This makes moving into a civil service position a highly desirable thing to accomplish.

The development center is currently undergoing an expansion and when done in the next 30 days will double its current capacity. Because of the expansion to the center it was recently approved for two new full time civil service positions. Claudia Tyson, the manager of the development center, had been told by a friend of hers at another base that she may be able to split the two full time positions into four part time positions and give her some flexibility in staffing. Tyson, cleared this move with Jim Smith who is the staffing specialist working with the child development center. He told her that splitting the two full time positions into four part time positions would be ok, and Tyson went ahead with filling two of these open positions.

Six weeks after the two positions had been filled an individual working in another unit at Boone AFB who intended to apply for one of the two full time positions filed a grievance. She alleged in her grievance that Boone AFB and Tyson have violated Air Force regulations and the union contract by not properly opening and advertising the two new full time civil service positions.

Analysis

The Boone Air Force Base found themselves in the middle of a grievance due to some inappropriate hiring practices. Although there was not any misconduct in this issue there was a complete lack of a defined procedure in how to administer hiring practices. The basis of this entire issue surrounds the lack of a defined procedure that must be followed when job openings are approved.

When the two full time civil service positions for the childcare center where approved and Tyson wanted to split them into four part time positions, there should have been a precise process in place to check to make sure that this was possible. When Tyson called to Smith to get the go ahead he should have checked the local union contract and the base regulation to make sure that this was appropriate. These actions could have helped to avoid this entire situation.

After two of the part time positions were filled and it was discovered that this could not be done, Smith should have consulted someone above him in order to come up with a solution that might have prevented the grievance being filed. At the point that the grievance was filed the relationship between management and the staffing department was damaged. They do in the end all work for the same place and should be functioning as a team and not as individual departments, doing their own separate things.

The only fair thing to do in this case is to repost the two full time civil service positions and go through the process of hiring for them. If the incumbents are interested in a full time position over a part time one then they should be allowed to apply. If in the end either one of them is not hired then there needs to be a plan put into place to make sure that there is a job for them somewhere else. If either one ends up unemployed it was after all through no fault of their own.

What advice do you have to redress the informal grievance?

I think that that my office should be responsible for redressing the grievance, since it was ultimately Smith that made the final call on the situation. The advice that I would have is that after the positions are reposted and the final hiring decisions are made, those employees out of the three that don't end up with one of these positions be given priority help with finding another position on the base.

3. If you do decide it is best to re-open and advertise the positions, how will you convince management to accept this decision? What should you do with those already in the positions?

I would not expect management to be very receptive to the solution of re-opening and advertising the positions. In order to make the entire process fair I would think that those already in those positions would keep them temporarily but have to reapply and risk not being given the job again.

4. If you think Smith provided management with bad advice, do you think he should be disciplined?

Yes, I think that he should take responsibility for giving the bad advice. Being the position that he is he should have checked to make sure that what he was saying was indeed true.

5. What will you do to rebuild relations with the union and with management? How can such problems be prevented in the future, and what process would you recommend be put in place regarding such personnel decisions?

In order to rebuild the relationship the two entities must work together to implement a plan to prevent this from ever happening again. A distinct step-by-step process should be documented in order to address the steps that need to be taken in every situation surrounding personnel issues.

Findings

Cherry County Human Services Department is a state agency that is responsible for social intervention services. The Children's Services Program is responsible for handling caseloads of protective services, foster care, delinquency and prevention. The agency as a whole is overworked and workers face high levels of stress and sometimes dangerous field work on a daily basis.

There are currently sixteen child welfare social workers employed at the agency. Cherry County Human Services has had a large amount of turnover in the past ten years. The staff that is left is very stressed and burnt out. The agency as a whole has a very bad reputation not only among their peers but within the community as well. Many of the current employees have been reprimanded for failure to do their jobs, along with several instances of other misconduct throughout the organization.

The agencies relationship with not only the community but with the court system has deteriorated over the years. The Cherry County Family Court judge, Kathleen Own, has called for something to be done about the problems as CCHS. She is especially concerned with the way that the agency interacts with and presents evidence to the court.

Nancy Jones has recently been hired as program manager at CCHS. Her first order of business was to have a meeting with the judge and Klenk. The judge is insisting that they agency fix their employee problems within the next three months. The agency is not doing anyone, especially the children of Cherry County any good operating the way that it is now. The agency needs to completely overhaul the way it does business, so that it can once again be a successful contributor to the welfare of both the county and the children.

Analysis

The Cherry County Human Services Department finds them selves in a very bad situation. The entire agency is overworked and over stressed. They have a bad reputation in the local court system along with the community as a whole. The turnover rate at the agency has been very high in recent years. This makes for over worked and under trained employees trying to a very hard and sometimes dangerous job. The entire agency needs to be cleaned up and reorganized in order to make it successful.

As it stands now the agency has no consistency and accountability in the way that it is run and managed. Employees seem to do as they please with no real consequences for their actions. They leave whenever they want, do non-work related functions on company time and even fight amongst themselves in the office. There is no team continuity among the group at all.

The purpose of the agency is to protect and advocate for the children of the community and functioning the way that this agency does, they certainly can not be serving their purpose to the fullest. Both the local courts and the community in general have bad feelings towards the agency, making for a very bad reputation.

The local court judge, Kathleen Owen, has stepped in to try and perpetuate some change among the employees of the agency. She has given the Cherry County Human Services Direction, David Klenk, three months to improve the relationships among the staff. Klenk has a tough job in front of him to try and weed out the bad employees, while trying to preserve the department as a whole. It will not be able to replace the workers but it is necessary to get rid of those that are counter productive to the mission of the agency and to the children. He also faces a big issue in the fact that he truly does not have enough full time positions and yet is facing budget cuts.

Recommended Course of Action

The Cherry County Human Services Department needs a complete overhaul. Those employees that don't really want to be there and are making everyone else's life miserable need to be weeded out. The agency as a whole has a bad morale and a lot of that has to do with the bad attitudes that the majority of the employees have. The workers need to feel as if they are part of a team and need to function as one if the agency is to be successful.

The purpose of the agency is to protect and advocate for the children of the county and as the agency stands now they are not doing a very good job of this. The court system feels as if they are being slighted when it comes to being given information in court cases. The employees of the agency do not get along with each other or with workers in the court system, which makes it very difficult to communicate with each other. The court system has insisted that they employee problems that are within the agency need to be remedied as soon as possible.

There needs to be a committee formed in order to try and figure out the problems that exist between the agency and the court system along with why the public has such a bad opinion of the agency. This committee would have representative from the agency, the court system and the public. This would help to increase the communication between the agency and the court system and help to fix the PR problem that the agency has with the general public.

There really needs to be caseworkers hired in order to help decrease the overload of work that the present caseworkers have. Unfortunately, it seems that the agency is facing budget costs and may even be losing a full time employee, instead of gaining any. The agency needs to come up with a plan to try and alleviate the amount of workload that each caseworker is assigned in order to try and alleviate the stress and burnout that they are all suffering.

Essay Questions

1. There are a number of serious problems with the organization. Identify some of the most serious of them. How did the atmosphere of the agency get to be so negative and problematic?

The problems that are present in the organization include: staff burnout, workers leaving early, high stress levels and employees conducting non-work related activities on county time. The atmosphere of the organization got this way over the years because of high turnover along with a change in public attitudes toward the cost of assisting others and the negative feelings towards welfare programs.

2. What do you do first? Identify the barriers to any plan of action. What interests and pressures will be facing Jones? What other resources could be utilized to improve the overall atmosphere of CCHS?

I think that the first thing that needs to be done is that the employees that are not performing or that are festering in their own discontent need to be removed. The immediate drawback to this plan is that their will be an immediate shortage of workers. But the ones that are continually bringing the entire agency down have to be dealt with through a formal disciplinary process in order not to elicit the wrath of the union. The best interest of the children will be a pressure that faces Jones, but leaving things the way they are is certainly not doing the children in Cherry County any favors. There needs to be more money made available in order to increase staffing although it does not look as if that will be happening anytime soon. But at the very least they need to figure out how not to eliminate any positions that already exist.

3. What plan should be developed regarding low morale among the staff?

In order to address the problem of low morale among the staff must be convinced that they are indeed a team and need to function as one. This may not ever happen with the staff that is currently employed but needs to happen in order for the agency to ever be successful.

4. It seems the agency has a PR problem. How would you improve the agency's relations with the community and court?

I would form a committee that is responsible for improving relations between the agency and the community and court. This committee would need to have representatives from each of the three entities in order to be able to address the PR problems at hand and improve the communication between all three.

5. A new manager dealing with long-time employees always faces the challenge of gaining their support and respect. This is especially true for Jones, who is not from Cherry County and who must contend with Strong, who has applied for her job. What problems can Jones expect to have in working with the employees, and what should be done to facilitate positive relations with the staff?

Jones can expect that long time employees are going to be unreceptive to a new manager and unwilling to embrace any change that needs to be done. Jones has to make sure that a plan is laid out and communicated to all the employees as to what needs to be done to improve the situation at hand. She needs to make sure that the lines of communication are kept open in order for any success to take place.

Findings

South County, which has a population of about 270,000 has for many years enjoyed a health financial situation, but has lately found they are facing a budget shortfall. The Board of Commissioners has relied on their county administrator to rearrange the money every year in order to make the budget balance. He has been telling the board for several years that this would not work forever and that they needed to put something else in place in order to deal with it. But the board did not want to hear any of his suggestions and now find themselves in a position that something has to be done now.

The county is now faced with a budget shortfall and a General Fund Contingency and Fund Balance that are low. There needs to be a plan put into place to not only replenish the contingency funds back to the levels at which they are supposed to being kept, but to also deal with the budget shortfall that will have a significant impact on projects funding for the year.

Mike Ketchem is worried that he is going to face opposition from both the board and the general public as he develops a plan to fix this problem. The board has been against any type of revenue creation programs for years. Mike knows that it is going to be hard to convince the majority of them that the time has come to change the way things are being done. He also knows that if the proposed solution is to increase millage rates or implement MTU's that there will be great opposition from the public and may not even pass.

The key is to come up with a solution that not only addresses the current problems at hand but also puts a plan in place to prohibit or at the very least deal with these types of problems in the future. You must always be thinking ahead in order to be successful in running a government entity.

Analysis

For years the South County Board of County Commissioners have gone along running the county just as they always have, with no thought at all as to what might happen in the future. They have always managed to balance their budget each year by rearranging money from one place to another. This year they find their General Fund Contingency and Fund Balance both low and no solution of what the next steps are.

Mike Ketchem and his office have been given the task of trying to come up with a solution to the current budget shortfall. The issues that are going to face Ketchem as he develops this plan will be push back from the board, since they have not been receptive for many years to any new revenue generating ideas. Also he will face opposition from the citizens of the county, especially if the solution includes any increases in the millage rate or the creation of MTU's, since these will both mean more taxes for the people.

Having a plan in place in order to deal with budget shortfalls is something that should have been done years ago in order to not be put into the situation that they are in now. Instead of gradually being able to come up solutions and make changes along the way they are now faced with an urgent do or die situation. They now have to develop a plan that will alleviate the current situation in the best possible manner in order to preserve the current budget and projects that need funding. This plan must also include an avenue for replacing the money in the contingency fund that they have used over the last several years to meet their yearly budget.

Recommend Course of Action

It is obvious that by letting themselves get into the situation that they are in, that there is not going to be an easy fix to the current budget problem. There is no plan that can be developed that is going to please both the board of commissioners and the citizens of South County. Some if not all of the stakeholders are going to oppose any plan that is put before them.

The best course of action that I see to solve the immediate budget shortfall is to extend the sales tax. This seems to be the fairest option available as it encompasses a tax that is spread around to everyone in the county, including people that are visiting or just passing through, as opposed to just taxing those who own property. Extending the sales tax would allow for the county to provide funding for road projects, planned construction of storm water facilities, popular parks along with other projects. A positive vote by the citizens would firm up the county's bond rating and would allow for the county to fund several projects in advance. It would also let the county put back into the General Fund Contingency or to firm up the General Fund's balance.

Another thing that could be done would be to examine all the county's expenditures and project funding to see if there is any trimming that could be done in order to reduce the amount of revenue needed. There also needs to be put into place a plan to deal with future budget shortages in order to avoid ending up in this situation ever again. Planning ahead is the key to having a financially health future.

Essay Questions

1. Identify the major problems facing the county. How did the county's financial situation become a problem? What could be done to assure that this does not happen again in the future?

The major problems that face the county are that the General Fund Contingency and the Fund Balance are low and there is no plan in place to deal with this situation. The funds have run out because there have not been any new provisions put into place for several years in order to generate new income. There needs to be a plan developed in order to increase revenue for the coming years along with a contingency plan to deal with shortfalls.

2. What are the problems you face in developing the plan? There are sensitive political issues at hand; among them is the fact that Ketchem has informed you of the past voting record of the board, which has opposed alternative revenue sources. He also feels that his job could be on the line, depending on how the plan is presented.

The problems that will be faced in developing a plan are working through the political issues with the board in order to convince them that there really is a problem and that it needs a solution. The key will be to develop a plan that it acceptable to the board and also be received well by the general public, since it will more than likely have to include some additional taxes.

3. Which options do you favor? MSTU's? Raising the millage rate? Extending the sales tax?

I like the idea of extending the sales tax since it seems that it will do the most good while not just hitting those who own property within the county. Taking this route will touch everyone in the county including those people who don't live there but are merely visiting or passing through.

4. What data would you request from OMB to assist you in developing the plan and making decisions?

I would want to know the amount of money that was going into and out of the county budget for the last five years, along with a list of all projects that are coming up and need to be funded. I would also want to know if there are any programs or spending that are currently in place that could be trimmed or eliminated.

5. What considerations should be made to build political and public support for your plan?

You would have to take into account that the board has objected for many years the idea of putting into place a revenue increasing idea. You would also need to focus on how if the problem is not addressed now that it will only continue to get worse and lead too many more issues in the future.