Wednesday, July 17, 2013

RO expresses strong concern about the DC’s electronic data entry program

Below is an excerpt from yesterday’s hearing on the GCA Agreement, in which Review Officer Dennis Walsh expressed his strong concern about the DC’s electronic data entry program

Mr. Walsh: You can, in a very straightforward way, see what the ratio is of reported counts to unreported counts, and anyone who looked at this can plainly see that there are issues in the District Council's getting stewards to report their time either by the devices that have been given to them by the District Council or by the telephone message or by logging onto a computer of their choice, and perhaps Mr. Murphy has some more accurate data than what's been provided to me, but there are very few instances that I see where we get anywhere near 90 percent reporting on these key three-man or more jobs. And I view this as a grave problem for the District Council. I view it as a failure of leadership by the District Council in providing written policies and indeed warnings to stewards.

This compliance component of all of these contracts is vital to the contract itself, that the linchpin here is the ability of members to log on and see the amount of time that has been reported for their jobs. Without that ability, this compliance program falls into the ground, and the District Council has got to get this squared away.

I cannot endorse implementation of the GCA agreement without some assurance from the District Council that they are all over this problem, that they have written policies for stewards that informs stewards that there will be consequences, indeed disciplinary consequences, if they don't get their time in and allow the members the ability to log on and check that time for themselves.

Mr. Murphy has this data. I think it's very troubling. I think that the senior leadership in the union needs to work with the director of operations and the director of the business center to get these policies in place. They need to call the stewards who have not entered their time, in some cases well past the 48 hours that was contemplated by the collective bargaining agreement itself, and they've got to tell these men and women that they have to get their time in or they will be taken off the jobs as stewards or they will be decertified indeed as stewards representing the District Council.


3 comments:

  1. "And I view it as a failure of leadership at the District Council..." per the R.O.

    No Kidding!

    Time to get rid of the OWL Director. Also high time to boiler plate every District Council contract (CBA) for all langauge & specifically the language centering on the compliance and reporting procedures.

    Another note:
    The GC's & Sub's and Contractor Associations via and through the D.C.'s lead counsel James Murphy allegedly claim they all support the R.O.'s program for reporting Man-Hours via the hand held electronic devices, however, the reality is none of them actually support the Union Stewards performing said tasks on their time or dime; rather, they want the Stewards to go home & do it on their time at home.

    That end of it has to be dealt with & rectified & addressed by the Review Officer at the September 3, 2013 Court conference.

    Moreover, given the cost per device and the cost of designing the alleged "proprietary software", the R.O. must consider asking the Court to require that the current team at Standard Data be phased out & that a competent Software Engineer be brought into the fold to design a flawless & seamless program without the bugs.

    This is relatively simple data entry work and it not rocket science.

    Every D.C. Fund is a separate legal entity on paper, so the R.O. must require each of them to send their attorneys to court to line out exactly what data they each require in evry new CBA and force all of the District Council parties and their attorneys into daily working sessions to eliminate unneccessary langauge, which will be necessary so that every contract, inclusive of the Funds are boiler plated properly and all are on the same page.

    This is the classic case of the left not knowing what the right is doing or why they're doing it.

    Simply too many cooks; and it is high time to simplify things and run this near $5 Billion dollar non-profit Corporation like an actual business which has a brand worth $5B. All the incompetent hacks need to be summarily fired and replaced with competent executives with the requisite business pedigrees, otherwise, we'll be talking about the second quarter century of court supervision.

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  2. Examine the exhibits, notice the figures are for 1 man, 2 man, and 3 man +, jobs; the discrepancies look virtually the same for all three categories. There are no stewards for 1 man and two man jobs, only an Company employees reporting. So the attempt by the Council attorney at smearing stewards FAILS!

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  3. DROP DEAD UNITY TEAM !

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