SEIU/1199 & ODH APC Meeting
SEIU 1199 Columbus Headquarters
September 13, 2011
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
MINUTES

Persons in Attendance:
Amanda Schulte, Shannon Richey, Rebecca Groves, Maria Rackham, Cathy Mockus, Carol Todd, Pamela Mets, Lesley M. Davis, Barb McCoy, Barb Stewart, Kate Harvey, Dustin Ellinger, Vince Borell, Rick Hoover, Roy Croy, Jamie Blair, Jamie Blair, Monica Rausch, Julie Bellman

1. Review of Last Meeting's Minutes- Minutes were approved

2. OAKS

a. Possibility for Oaks on Weekends?

i. Concern: Due to the hours of OT worked by Surveyors lately, many have requested the ability to enter the system on the weekends to add the OT, make changes to leave, et cetera.
ii. Current availability can't be changed unless done through DAS. ODH does not have that ability.
iii. Monica passed out OAKS availability and explained that if someone works in the middle of the pay-roll weekend, he/she can just access OAKS on Monday or Tuesday.

3. Surveyor Scheduling

a. Inexperienced Surveyors

i. Concern: Full teams are not available for entire surveys, so inexperienced surveyors are going together without tenured staff. This results in the surveyors feeling like they have failed when they do not get done.

1. Vince pointed out that everyone is trained, Kate asked if they're being trained in areas like complaints that QIS doesn't cover.
2. In all examples that Dustin had heard every team member on the team was qualified. Over the last month, at mgmt. team meetings, mgmt. has been evaluating the training and discussing how to improve it. This is a problem nationwide.

a. Union suggested they include surveyors in these discussions.

b. Schedules v. Amounts of Work

i. Concern: Often Surveyors are scheduled five days a week with assignments that require more than 8 hours a day to complete. Knowing how long the work will take them, Surveyors feel like they have "automatic" OT before the week even begins.
ii. Happens all the time, people are just sick of this and want to bring it up again
iii. It's like the people need to figure out how to use all their hours before Friday, but some will call in on Friday and say I have a half hour left, well once you start the survey, you have to finish it
iv. Management is interviewing five people tomorrow for vacant surveyor positions, but not sure how many vacant positions exist. Eight new people started yesterday. This should help alleviate the scheduling problem somewhat. Also added additional start days- from 4 to 6.

1. Barb explained that the problem is that Surveyors are pre-assigned 5 days a week. They have flex hours, so if they get to Thursday and have done all 40 hours, then they have to do OT on Thursday.
2. Recommendation for individuals to talk to mgmt. about the schedule to see if something could be done about it. Suggested that mgmt. staff think about this a little more while scheduling. Maybe this is more a scheduling problem than it is a problem with Surveyors completing their work on time.
3. What about part time positions for people who just retired or something or like an intermittent employee? Mgmt stated that they have tried this, but ODH had to start taking away intermittents' travel reimbursements, so most of them left.
4. Talked about independent contractors, but these have to go through Kasich's office. This would possibly save money because not as much OT and no benefits. But there is still the problem with the lack of persons willing to do this.
5. Asked if a particular person applied for one of these positions. Rebecca will find out her last name and let her know.

4. Surveyor Auditing

a. Surveyors have been told that their time/travel will be audited periodically. For many of the same reasons Surveyors are being audited, will Supervisors' have similar monitoring? .

i. Everyone will be audited at least once on a quarterly basis.
ii. Compared this to non-field staff with sign-in and sign-out sheets, and this is a way to have that same accountability for field staff. No one person will be singled out with more frequent audits. Might even audit more frequently once the Agency sees how much time it takes.
iii. Managers get monitored every 2 weeks.
iv. Who will do it? Direct Supervisor or other Supervisors

5. Vacation

a. Surveyors have been told that they need to give 30 days' notice for vacation requests. This mandate is in violation of contract Article 10.03

"Requests made later [than 30 days out], if granted, shall be granted on a first-come, first-serve basis."

Therefore, members are permitted to make vacation requests less than 30 days out from the requested dates, and management must grant and deny those as prescribed by Article 10.
b. One supervisor requested that employees turn in vacation requests at least 30 days out, but this is only a request, and management agrees to follow the contract.

6. Proposed Class Plan Changes (sent in email by Chris Keppler) a. Concern: If the HSPC position is not attracting the candidates with the right qualifications, why are all of the positions filled? There appears to be no problem filling the positions with the minimum qualifications listed. And if this is true then we should offer a supplement to the BU positions to attract the right candidates, not change them to management positions.

i. Management stated that it is not changing anyone to a mgmt. position.
ii. Actually making a BU classification in the series for this position. So there will be different minimum quals in the classification.
iii. Do we know how many positions? Class plan has not even been finalized yet. But someone already in the position will not be misplaced. It is more for as vacancies come up, the new positions will have these minimum quals.

7. Workplace Mediation

a. How can we get people involved with using the process?
b. EAP does mediations, and in addition there is commission on dispute resolution. Cannot force supervisors to go through mediation, which seems to be a large part of the problem.

i. Monica said if we told her the situations she could certainly suggest that the Supervisor(s) involved attend mediation. Cannot force them, but can have the conversation.
ii. Can go to Deborah Payne through the EEO process.
iii. These were manager positions, but nonetheless still laid off.

8. Update for SRIs and progress of streamlining on-site review process

a. During the training on July 7th, a number of issues were brought up regarding the program populating SRIs and the time it takes to bring them up in the field with an air card. b. Agency is meeting with staff to look at technology issues. VPN access through air card is difficult. Sharepoint also, online SRIs

i. Said that there are a number of ways that surveyors can access these
ii. From a tech standpoint, to close out an SRI it just needs a date to complete

c. There was a problem where the list was not highlighted properly, but that has been fixed.
d. At our last APC we were told that there would be a filter.

i. The filter is that there is the highlighting, and the hovering over the date to see whether it is closed. So if a Surveyor is out in the field and looking at it, it highlights pink if it requires an action and needs looked at. If the Surveyor is somewhere and has a lot of them that are pink, call Supervisor to ask how to handle.

e. Dustin will take idea of a date filter back to IT to see if that would speed up the process.
f. Dustin will consider how to globally get feedback on IT stuff like this (loading portable document files).
g. Working on a project with the Affordable Care Act, can help with certain actions. Doing this now in Indiana. Timeline for this is sometime in 2012.

9. Follow up: Mileage Reimbursement

a. Federal rate increasing to 50.5 cents per mile-Has there been any new discussions with OBM or ODH to change the rate for mileage?

i. Nothing in the works. Pointed out that other reimbursement rates are by federal standards, but the mileage is not.

10. Senate Bill 2

a. What is ODH's plan besides just changing the Employee Performance Evaluations?

i. There was a recent training done. Not everyone has done the training, and it has to do with customer service. Now employees are being tested on this, and it has been added to evaluations.
ii. All that will change (and already has) as a result of the Bill is the training requirement and the evaluation form. That is all.
iii. Monica explained that the law has very high standards, so the evaluations are meant to accurately reflect this.

1. Obviously no one wants to be dinged on evaluations for this, but that is why there is an evaluation appeals process.

11. Date of Next APC

a. Thursday, December 1, 2011