CWA 1180 - HRA Watch

HRA Watch

The Melrose 8 beat back the biggest penalties
December 2001

Eight workers at the Melrose Job Center who had been brought up on disciplinary charges last year settled their cases in late December. The penalties originally sought by HRA ranged from a few days' suspension to as much as 20 days' suspension. The settlements call for pay fines (not suspensions) of no more than five days, a significant reduction from the original penalties. Equally importantly, the final outcome of these cases represents an implicit recognition by management that the system is faulty. Workers at Melrose (as in other HRA Job Centers) are buckling under immense caseloads and are severely understaffed. It is, in fact, impossible for them to do the work assigned to them in a timely manner. The very fact that a majority of workers in the shop were brought up on charges underscored that point.

"There's a very important lesson here," said staff rep Gwen Richardson, who represented the Melrose workers in the disciplinary proceedings, "and that is: you need to document what's going on in your workplace!" Regular memos to supervisors citing specifically the factors that keep members from being able to perform their jobs (e.g., lack of staff, uncovered caseloads, computer problems) are the only way to demonstrate that it is in fact not 1180 members who are failing to perform their jobs. Richardson noted that in the Melrose case those who had been hit with the biggest penalties had done no documenting at all, while those with lesser penalties had at least sporadically documented their situations.

Members' failure to regularly document the impossible circumstances they are put in promoted the union two years ago to begin a "CYA" campaign to urge them to do so. "CYA" stands for "cover your…ankles." For more information, please click here. "If you don't have the tools, you can't do the job. But you have to write that you don't have the tools," DeKalb Job Center member Pat Greenidge urged others when the campaign began. "You have to tell the story of what's going on. You have to have it on paper."

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