Public Employee Press

Grievance campaign gets results at ACS

A longstanding struggle between the Administration for Children’s Services and Clerical-Administrative Employees Local 1549 has produced results. Thanks to the resolution of an eight-year campaign, ACS employees in the Child Protective Field Offices will now receive some training about proper procedures.

Chief Shop Steward Dalphine Williams was the named party in many of the separate grievances that led to a step III hearing and settlement. Ms. Williams was trained for her job when she started over 18 years ago.

“I got two and a half weeks of training,” she explained. “Now there’s nothing to help the new people coming in and they need to have training to know the proper procedures,” she said. For many years, the Child Welfare Administration was part of the Human Resources Administration. In 1996, a separate agency was created — the ACS — to better serve children and their families.

Assistant Clerical Division Director Eddie Gates explained that during the reorganization, the clerical workers, who were an integral part of the system, suddenly found themselves outside the loop. They were cut out of the newly created computer system called “Connections.” “Prior to 1996, there was a written policy and the information went to the unit’s clerical person,” he said.

Report after report has pointed to the lack of a streamlined and comprehensive record-keeping procedure as one of the primary problems at ACS. The agency investigates an average of 55,000 reports of abuse or neglect each year. It has responsibility for a foster care system for
approximately 20,000 children.

Dealing with life and death matters leaves little room for sloppiness and mismanagement. Yet, according to Mr. Gates, “This agency has always been a very lax place, even when it was HRA. What makes a clerical worker so unimportant that you can’t put the procedures they are supposed to follow on paper?” he asked.

Now the campaign that started in 1996 has gained ground. With the procedures and training for the field office personnel in place, the union is pushing the agency to produce the same for the employees of the Foster Care & Preventive Services. At a Labor-Management meeting on May 5, management agreed to produce a written policy on procedures by July 8.

“It’s good to see that after many years of pressure applied to ACS, they’ve finally come together with a program that recognizes the contributions of the clerical employees,” said Clerical Division Director Ronnie Harris. “We are optimistic that this will solve our issues,” he said.