News for Jan 2007:

President's Report:

I know it’s been quite a while since Local 552 has put out this Corrections Courier. While we hoped to get this informational newsletter out more often, I also do not want to inundate our members with mailings unless there is important information to report. With 2006 being the first year of our contract, the frenzied pace of union activity dropped off significantly. Many of us welcomed this break. This was also a year which saw serious increases in crime in Minneapolis, particularly with juveniles. The lull in union activities has allowed me to concentrate on my sometimes overwhelming caseload caused by this increase in juvenile crime. That’s my excuse and I’m stickin’ to it. After this routine down time from union activities, things are picking up. On 11/30/06, the local’s executive board, officers and trustees were sworn in for the 2007-2008 terms. There were no contested elections this year. The new local officers are as follows:

President: Tim Turrentine
Vice-President: Patrick Guernsey
Treasurer: Will McDonald
Secretary: Rick Rajtar
Chief Steward: Rhonda Bode
Stewards: Bobbi Harrington
Pat Kelly
Michelle Moran
Mary Ann Mowatt
John Neumann
Brian Rother,
David Tremewan
Sue Wick
Brenda Wood
Trustees: Roy Elliott
Deanne Schultz,
Dave Seeler

As you can see there are several new faces on this year’s executive board. This influx of fresh enthusiasm is most welcome.

On January 24, 2007, the Local 552 executive board, officers and trustees participated in a four hour brainstorming session to chart our course for the upcoming year. This involved delegating tasks, as well as focusing on ways to increase the flow of information to our members. We made a commitment to get this newsletter out on a more consistent basis to be authored by myself or a guest writer. We are working ways to keep our website www.afscme552.org up-to-date and accurate to make that a more useful tool for our membership. We are also attempting to devise an email system where we can reach large numbers of our members through an email “tree.”

The major focus of this extended meeting was preparations for the contract campaign that will ultimately lead to contract negotiations this coming summer and fall. Once again, Local 552 has decided to join forces with the other Hennepin County AFCSME Locals in joint contract negotiations. This will give us a much stronger say and bargaining power in relation to cost of living allowance, benefits and health care costs. However, there are many concerns that are particular to Probation and Parole that need to be addressed.

To that end, a sub-committee was formed which ultimately took on the name of AFCSME Local 552 “Equity Team.” This consists of executive board members, Rhonda Bode, Brenda Wood, Bobbi Harrington, Mary Ann Mowatt, Dave Seeler and David Tremewan. They have taken on the task of gathering pay and contract information from other Minnesota county jurisdictions, federal agencies as well as comparable probation/parole departments in other states. Particularly, we are looking at pay scales, contracts, benefit information such as health insurance as well as the issue of sick and vacation leave. We still continue to lag far behind Ramsey County in pay. Several of the other surrounding counties are equal or slightly ahead of us. We have taken the view that Hennepin County Probation/Parole should be the leader statewide in salary structure as we supervise the most offenders and work with a population that has the highest crime rate in the state. Once we gather this data, we will be enlisting the support of our Administrators, County Board and the Bench to address this pay disparity.

Although I would never be so bold as to predict where we will end up with the new contract, I can definitely state that this local will be better prepared for contract negotiations than it ever has been before. We’ve got seventeen very motivated executive board members and enthusiasm, for the tasks at hand are high. This newsletter represents our first call for support from the local. To that end, we have included with this newsletter, a survey to get your responses as to what you’d like to see addressed in the contract negotiations. Please take the time to fill in the issues that you believe are most important as well as what you would be willing to do to help achieve those goals. Return the survey via interoffice mail to Rhonda Bode at MC 113.

It is obvious that cost of living allowance, pay equity and health care will be the major concerns in our contract campaign. In reference to health care, the Hennepin County Joint Management/Labor Health Care Committee is a group that is represented by all organized union bodies, supervisors, county administration and labor relations. That group has decided to use those monthly meetings throughout 2007 to educate ourselves on various ways that other jurisdictions have tried to be creative to address the tremendous increases in health care costs. We will be reporting regularly back to the membership on the progress of those discussions.

I anticipate that 2007 will be a very busy one for Local 552, both in our workload and union activities. As you try to juggle all the demands of your job and caseloads, please try to figure out a way in which to support the local in contract negotiations.

For about the last six months, several members of our local have been working with the Department of Community Corrections Administration on a “Safety Work Group”. The focus of this group is to concentrate on all aspects of Probation Officer safety, in the office and in the community. Much of the focus to date has been on training. A professional workforce must be professionally trained. Many of the job functions currently being performed by Hennepin County Probation/Parole Officers put them in situations in which there is a direct threat from our clients or the community toward their safety. Our officers must be given the tools and training necessary to ensure their safety. We will be updating our membership on the progress of this training work group as it continues. Please continue to report any significant incidents or safety issues to John Neumann at 612-348-5068.

Lastly, everyone is aware that the Department of Community Corrections and the County, in general, have made major changes in the Parking Contract Reimbursement for our members. Many jobs sites and job functions had their parking contracts taken away and are reimbursed only on a mileage or daily parking level. The union will continue to try to get that parking reimbursement returned to all our members or at least as many members as we possibly can.

On that note, it is incumbent that each and every one of our members make sure that they provide an accurate account on their mileage forms as to just how often they use their personal vehicles. The county uses mileage reimbursement and parking receipts to gauge how often probation officers need their vehicles. If we get lazy and don’t bother to submit those requests, the county assumes that we are not using our vehicles. Sometimes it’s easier to not do the paperwork if we had a series of short trips. While short trips do not add up to much in mileage and parking reimbursement, they do clearly tell the administration that car available status and parking contract reimbursement is appropriate for all our members. Please take the time to keep accurate records of your mileage and parking as it benefits all our members to do so.

If you have any direct questions, please feel free to call me, Tim Turrentine, at 612-348-9114. As you can see by the new executive officers, we represent a wide variety of job functions and locations throughout the Department of Community Corrections so nobody should be too far away from information or an ear for your concerns.

Thank you,
Tim Turrentine
AFSCME Local 552

VP Report:

It’s amazing how things change when you go from being president of the union to vice president. Suddenly, you are irrelevant. Before, I could call administrators and because I was local 552 president, they would call me back. I believe this was because they were afraid that I would talk to county commissioners. Now, even though I still talk to county commissioners, I seem to be some sort of union president past that they do not seem to have to pay attention to anymore…..

Well, I want you to know that really doesn’t bother me. Since I stepped down from being president of local 552, I have been able to spend more time focusing on my six kids, knowing that the local is in the very capable hands of President Tim Turrentine. I want you to know, from me, that Tim has done an excellent job running the local. That has freed me up to be more of a player at the Council 5 level and I now serve as president of the Hennepin County AFSCME Policy Committee, where all nine AFSCME locals at Hennepin County and Hennepin County Medical Center are now affiliated.

Still, I am a probation officer and a union activist. Many folks still trust me to interpret the contract and give advice on union issues, which I am happy to do.

Recently, a several Family Court PO’s have approached the union because their parking contracts, like many other PO’s had been revoked about a year and a half ago. This situation came home to me because I can remember as a child, when my parents got divorced in 1971, Hennepin County Family Court services was to my brother and sister, a beacon of sanity on our dysfunctional family situation. I looked forward for the days when I would come home and Lynn and Chet from Hennepin County were there for my brother and sister and I. They would drive from the Government center to our home in Bloomington and help my siblings and I make sense out of the turmoil of our parents divorce. This was possible because Lynn and Chet had their parking paid for and they could drive from downtown Minneapolis and help our family.

Well, how times have changed! While Lynn and Chet have long since retired, the work loads of their successors have grown exponentially. So much so that Family Court Probation Officers have been working week after week in excess of the forty hours per week for which they have been paid. What was different at family court was that after the Federal Government ruled that we were all nonexempt employees, the administration there never seemed to acknowledge the change of status. They kept track of hours the Family Court PO’s were working at one hour per one hour comp time bank for them. The problem was after their parking contracts were cancelled, the chaos that caused their schedules seemed to cause even more off the books comp time. Workloads increased, but staffing did not.

I have written about this issue before. I know for a fact that many AFSCME local 552 members are so dedicated, that they keep on donating their time to the county because they believe their work is more important.

What has happened since this change was made? We have fallen over $7,000 per year behind our counterparts in Ramsey County and Arrowhead Community Corrections in the Duluth area in annual pay. What did the county do? The came up with a scheme that made parking contracts an under the table perks for administrators and took parking contracts away from people who’s dedication we all know work more than for which they are compensated.

What does this mean? Some people think, “So I give two to three extra hours to the county per week, I want to make sure that all the bases are covered and my probationers are in compliance!”

Well, under the secret Family Court Services plan, persons working an average of two, three or four hours of overtime per week at top probation officer pay for 2006, are being cheated out of $1,633 per year for two extra hours per week, $2,600 per year for three hours extra per week, and $3,371 per year for four extra hours per week. This assumes that these members were able to use up all the 1:1 hours of comp time they accrued during 2006.

Using the number of $32.42 per hour top pay for 2006, lets look at this for other probation officers who work in adult and juvenile who think the unofficial, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on undocumented overtime is okay. A Probation Officer at top pay in the Adult and Juvenile divisions who “donates” two hours per week in 2006 lost $5,057.52. Donating three hours per week would be $7,586.28 per year. Four hours per week is $10,115.04 per year.

When the federal government told the county, in 2001, that it could no longer expect Probation Officers to donate this much labor to them, there were threats of time clocks. About a half dozen or so Probation Officers were extremely mad at me when the Federal Government stepped in and said the county could not get this free labor from its Probation Officers. I was accused of “dropping the ball.” A more flexible work schedule was more important to these people than $5,000, $7,000, or $10,000 per year!

Despite this unprecedented giving by Probation Officers, the county took away parking contracts from more than half of the Probation Officers who had them in 2005. Yet, they decided that managers, supervisors, planner/analysts should still have parking contracts. Now they have decided that we need a new level of administration, more program managers, (parking paid of course) and we are still nearly 10% under the number of Probation Officers we had in 2001.

I am really excited about our contract campaign this fall. In our local we have at least four times the number of members helping us fight for a decent contract in 2008-2007. In this Courier, all of us are being asked to complete a contract survey. Please help us even further by volunteering to do at least one activity for the contract campaign this year. If we all unite together, I know we can make significant gains in our next contract!

Thank you!