Comments on: City’s IT Dept Attempting Unionization

By: Earl

Earl — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 14:11:12 +0000

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.

By: xcityworker

xcityworker — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:10:52 +0000

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.

By: Earl

Earl — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:01:48 +0000

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!

By: BBDfan

BBDfan — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 04:56:36 +0000

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.

By: Earl

Earl — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:55:55 +0000

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.

By: Earl

Earl — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:50:38 +0000

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.

By: Justin Time

Justin Time — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:25:05 +0000

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.

By: meeciteewurkor

meeciteewurkor — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:58:04 +0000

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.

By: BBDfan

BBDfan — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:47:42 +0000

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.

By: meeciteewurkor

meeciteewurkor — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:27:38 +0000

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.