CWA 1180 - HRA Watch

HRA Watch

AJOS update:
Same s___, different day
July 2003

Local 1180's improper practices charge against HRA for implementation of the Associate Job Opportunity Specialist (AJOS) title continues to wind its way, slowly, through the Office of Collective Bargaining (OCB). Meanwhile, at an equally glacial pace, OCB is conducting representation hearings on the JOS title series to determine which union(s) will represent workers in the JOS, AJOS and Administrative JOS titles. Local 1180 has filed petitions seeking to represent AJOS and Administrative JOS workers.

Local 1180 members who took the AJOS title continue to be universally disappointed and frustrated with the reality of AJOS after the "big sell job" HRA management did to try to lure people into the title, says one 1180 steward who took the title and regrets the move. Top HRA administrators went to job centers (where we suspect they'd never been before) to plug the idea. As much as they hyped the title, they also implicitly threatened workers who refused to take it. "It was like if you didn't, you'd have a job somewhere, but…" said Marie Gagliano, and the unspoken communication was that you might very well be moved to the furthest borough away from your current location.

Gagliano says she herself took the title "hopefully for promotion, and low case loads. It was supposed to be five workers to a group. And none of that's happening. We have four workers to a group and 150 cases each. The promotional opportunity is not there either." In addition, workers in the title are working for different salaries because of their origination in different unions and HRA's way of handling the jurisdictional issues involved.

Gagliano was one of the witnesses that testified at OCB on behalf of Local 1180 in the hearings to determine jurisdiction. "I told them that what I do as a PAA, I do the same thing as an AJOS," which is what 1180 has pointed out all along. The hearings have been going on for many months, and will continue for several more.

Many Local 1180 members who took the AJOS position and are unhappy have tried to revert to their old titles only to see HRA refuse to allow them to. It's another measure of how desperate HRA is to keep people, any people, in this title that should have been DOA.

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