City’s IT Dept Attempting Unionization
Note: I’m writing this as a citizen of Tulsa and not as an employee. While most of the knowledge to write this article comes from my many years of experience as a city employee, I have written this as an opinion as a private citizen.
The citee’s IT dept has taken the first steps to unionize.
Have to be honest with you. I’ve seen this coming for about two years. While I do not work in the city’s IT department, I’ve come into contact with more than enough IT working stiffs to know that they definitely need to.
I’ve had mixed feelings about unionizing over the years. The main turnoff for me has always been the political stances (always liberal) of unions. I’ve never appreciated getting mail from the union endorsing one liberal candidate after another. However, that said, this particular AFSCME local recently became a whole lot better with Mr. Bill Roland at the reigns. Not that I had issues with past AFSCME presidents, I just happen to know Bill and know him to be one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met.
In any case, the city’s information technology department is vital to YOUR city, folks. I will try to explain and defend why I think your city’s IT dept should join up with AFSCME and fight to keep this work internal.
My main concern with our IT folks is to keep this line of work as internal as possible. Outsourcing this work is one of the worst things the city could do. The city and management is so tuned in to cutting costs, they’re forgetting one very serious issue while running around slitting throats:
Security. (and I’m not talking about job security, either)
Plain and simple. Folks, your city IT department takes care of making sure that vitally important information stored in electronic form stays where it is supposed to be. I cannot imagine how easy it would be for a social engineer, hacker, or whatever to gain access to extremely sensitive information simply by coming in through the back door of outsourcing.
Not making sense? Ok, I’ll help you out. Let’s pretend that the city outsources some kind of specialized service that is normally performed by a city employee who has already gone through the extensive background checks, pee pee tests, physical examinations, proof of citizenship, etc. Let’s say it is something random like, oh.. I don’t know… basic workstation technical support. Maybe they could simply do this through a temp agency or something. Who knows. Well, what you have just done is open the door through this temp agency to allow in folks of what I call “unknown origin and motives”. How do we know that this temp agency vigorously checks out the person they are offering to us? We don’t . We take their word for it in the form of a contract that specifies they do so (or do we?). (Just like we take the word of other contractors that they are abiding by the law). Are the people offered just folks wanting to work and work hard? Probably. But the unknown gap presents issues, in my opinion.
So, we’ve got this temp now who receives very many privileges with administrative rights to very many machines within the city’s network.
Let’s pretend that this person is a terrorist.
The terrorist has one specific goal in mind. He wants to obtain detailed schematics of your city’s water distribution system. Well, he finds it. He snags it all into a thumb drive, works for a year, and then moves on. Two years later, disaster strikes when the terrorist, with guidance from his stolen data, digs a hole very close to the source of your water after it is already in the city’s main infrastructure network. He knows where valves are and how to operate them to isolate a section of piping. He also knows how he can do this without service interruption to anybody so he can work in secret. He modifies this section of piping. He attaches a homemade explosive device. He buries it. He drives away. Over the course of two years he does this in 10 different places. One day he sets them all to operate.
Bam. Your city is out of water.
Havoc ensues.
All because the city wanted to save money.
Is this overly dramatic? I don’t think so. My coworkers and I have talked about scenarios just like this. In fact, we brainstorm sometimes trying to figure out ways a terrorist could try to physically harm the distribution system and what could be done to protect it. We know this system like the back of our hands. We know the nuances, the little tricks, random things that others wouldn’t. This system is our baby. We care for it, we’re invested in it. It’s our life and we’re willing to protect it and yours, too. An outsourced contractor has one thing on his mind: how to bilk the city for as much money as possible, use cheap labor of questionable sources, and skimp on quality when it generates a bigger profit. In other words, they don’t care about you or the job they’re doing like WE do.
The folks in information technology, in this sense, are no different than me or my coworkers. Experience, dedication, and quality cannot be gained through cheaper inexperience, non-dedication, and the resulting substandard work. Outsourcing and contracting within the city in most cases is a very bad idea.
The whirrrrrrrld article had many people claiming that the IT department in the city is unionizing to get more money. Newsflash.. wages and promotions have been frozen.
I would say they are unionizing because they believe the same thing I do. The city’s desire to cut costs will jeopardize security. The turmoil created by outsourcing generates chaos as varying IT sections’ responsibilities become unclear. Lack of clarity and clear objectives creates security holes that can be overlooked.
And security holes can have dire consequences.
As I stated earlier, I’ve had mixed feelings about unions over the years. However, in my opinion and in this case, unionizing will halt this chaos and bring the level of security within your city’s information infrastructure back up to where it needs to be. The work environment will become more peaceful and enjoyable. This is when the workers will be able to concentrate on their vital jobs.
Just my two cents.
Good luck IT guys.
Only at the Government level does this have a chance of working. If you tried to pull that crap in the corporate IT world, you’d just get canned and your jobs outsourced to India.
I agree with you. Normally, I’d be fully against unionization, especially in the private sector.
In this odd case, it’d bring about some needed stability. The potential consequences are just too great to go mucking around with those well-established positions.
There are several issues to be addressed.
1) The new IT management seems to consider the City’s Policies and Procedures voluntary on their part, required on ours.
2) Performance evaluations no longer have any basis beyond like/dislike. People don’t know how they are being evaluated and some have received poor performance evaluations for tasks they were never asked to do.
3) Management talks about process and improvement, but the environment is more chaotic than ever. They push but don’t lead, and then make it our fault.
4) They have replaced one director with 4 and are adding another. The cost of management has become enormous.
5) New hires are mostly from TV Guide, including management. They are very critical of how the City operates, but they are the ones bailing out of a failing organization. How is it, with all the IT people out of work around here, that TV Guide always seems to have the most qualified?
6) There is a lot of organizational knowledge held in long-time employees, but since we are long-time employees, they have no respect for it. Only those from the “good” side of the community, the private sector, can know anything useful.
7) When the economy improves many of these people will move on, leaving only those for whom public service is an honorable career. Hopefully they will not have driven all of us off by then.
After hearing specifics like this, makes me say all the better reason to band together, in my opinion.
Good luck to you. The work you and your coworkers do has a profound effect on the rest of us, and I hope the city realizes the current atmosphere needs to be changed.
Don’t forget the fact that they use to have 1 person running IT, at a salary of about $110,000, now they have 3 directors making over $350,000 combined, plus a Mayor appointed position above them that makes $135,000.
There is also one other IT director position that is now open, but being filled by a contract employee…. God and the Mayor only know how much she is getting.
All that money being spent to run an IT department that doesn’t run as well as it did 4 years ago. That’s not just my opinion, ask anyone other than the people mentioned above and they will tell you so.
Let me address Steve Roemerman’s comment about this only having a chance at the government level. This is happening because the corporate IT world in Tulsa laid these people off. The layoffs were a combination of outsourcing jobs to India and corporate buy outs, leaving Tulsa with few IT jobs. This is happening because they chose to come into our house and pull their corporate crap in the government world.
The Union seems to be the last hope for this IT organization. The working conditions are seriously unfair. New hires are being paid much higher salaries and are not required to work as many hours as existing City staff. There are two standards for employees. New staff is allowed to work 40 hours a week and still be considered a high performer. Existing staff is expected to work twice as hard and a minimum of 50 hours a week to be considered slightly above mediocre.
This new group is not impressive, smarter or more educated either. The only difference is they are new and we are old. I’ve heard comments such as, we don’t walk fast enough, and we smell like Ben Gay, we’re idiots. There has never been any focus on building the organization but a strategy to “work them until they quit” attitude. One particularly nasty director stated that there are no bars on the windows or locks on the doors. No one is keeping the staff here. The environment is hostile and unpleasant.
Staff has endured insults and hurtful remarks by the new hires. Remarkably, they have stated that they feared working for the city would ruin their chances of getting jobs in the private sector when the job market opens up again.
There are several things a union should and should not do:
1)It should not protect deadbeat employees; it should enforce transparency in how employees are evaluated
2) It should give employees a voice in protecting the public interest, not just the interest of public employees
3) It should not assume an adversarial relationship with management; we are here to serve the public and so are they; together we can help the City operate better
4) It is not about money; we all acknowledge the trade-off between job security and pay
5) The union is not the solution to all our problems; if it is not strongly supported by the IT staff it will not solve any; it is not a weapon to be used against management; it is our voice, our consensus, and must reflect our good will, our honor, and our public service.
Thank you BBDfan. I agree with your comments.
The main reason we asked the Union for help is exactly that! IT needs to get back its focus. Get back to serving the public and making sure the tax payers are getting the services they’re paying for. Most long term IT employees are dedicated public servants. This new corporate mentality coming into IT is not. They’re out for themselves. They want high paying salaries from your tax dollars. The biggest complaint from this new group, aside from how stupid all existing City staff is, is how much of a salary cut they took to come work for the COT. I guess a check is better than NO check.
If an employee is a true dead beat then they need to go. And such is the case with the new management. If you’re not here to serve the public but to serve yourself, You need to go!
I have worked at the city and the airport in IT as a Temp and Perm employee in the past. I have never in my life seen so many lazy people for such a small amount of work. There is no accountability, no leadership, no processes for improvement. Literally 10-20% of the folks do all the work while the rest mostly old timers sit around and collect checks off those that don’t have seniority. The city only needs 1/3 the amount of workers it has in IT if they would just do their jobs. They city is rampant with Unqualified managers that display the Peter Principle at its finest. Also silly rules about schooling requirements and their love of all things Affirmative Action. It’s no wonder the city is broke with performance this poor. I had a manager tell me “A little every day is all I expect” I heard long time employees say it’s the long dollar not the big dollar. Referencing that its easy work and you just hang on till retirement while doing as little as possible. I had to go back to the private sector for fear this would skew my work ethic forever. It is no different under Mayor Taylor than it was under Lafortune. The only difference is she has more cronies on her payroll.
xcityworker, Please qualify when you worked for the City and which group of IT you were assigned. I have experienced those who want to be on the dole but that’s a low percentage. Most of the long dollar employees have retired with the new consolidation.
Your experience with the City is unfortunate.