Labor-Management Meeting Notes

Labor Management Meeting 4/11/23

The Union approached management about several things, without getting firm results on many of them, but we let our stance be known.

Staff assaults, and the way the DA’s office is handling it, was brought up. Deputy Buscher is designing a new form and process for reporting staff assaults, and management was open to adding some training in about how to report and what the standards are. Hopefully with this new process, we will see inmates being held accountable through the legal process.

Hiring was brought up, and the Union continued to press Jonathan Wexler about both recruitment and the advertising being done. The fact that they have included more information on the Diversity Coordinator rather than any information on the Corrections Deputy spot. Admin is still hoping the recruitment event will bring in more people. Admin is quite proud that they hired 6 and then 8, but that is over 3 months. We are also still pushing to get access to numbers of people washing out in the process and what part they are washing out of.

Chief Alexander told the board that Command Staff would be getting rid of the POEB. This caught the board completely off guard and we did not know of any intent to do so. This is part of a redesign of the FTEP Process which we are slowly being involved in, but the rumor of the E-Board asking for it still made it to the facilities. Again, we did not know of the move, nor did we support it.

The MOT issue was brought up, and frankly speaking, the E-Board see Command’s stance as once of limiting the bad will towards them. They continue to tell us to “bring ideas to them” but they refuse to have any themselves. Mostly, we believe this is an attempt to make the E-Board or the membership responsible for any decisions, removing the responsibility of Command Staff. While we are open to ideas, we want to push Command to address the issue, and bring their solutions as well, rather than just waiting for us.

Command again is pushing the retire/rehire program as the solution, but has yet to present an SOP or MOA to the Union. Once they do, we will let the membership know of the process. We intend to make sure we don’t harm the membership by command writing a policy that allows them to circumvent the current OT hiring process.

We also broached the subject of Double Time for all overtimes, but command was non-committal to it. Deputy Buscher will bring it up with the Sheriff and County Commissioners.