{"id":29359,"date":"2016-12-25T09:03:41","date_gmt":"2016-12-25T17:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/state-employees-union-to-file-grievance-over-dot-outsourcing\/"},"modified":"2016-12-25T09:03:41","modified_gmt":"2016-12-25T17:03:41","slug":"state-employees-union-to-file-grievance-over-dot-outsourcing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/state-employees-union-to-file-grievance-over-dot-outsourcing\/","title":{"rendered":"State employees union to file grievance over DOT outsourcing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The state\u2019s largest public employee union plans to file a class action grievance against the Walker administration regarding the outsourcing of design work within the Department of Transportation & Public Facilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a clear violation of our contract and we don\u2019t intend to stand by and let that go unchallenged,\u201d Jim Duncan, executive director of the Alaska State Employees Association, said by phone Friday.<\/p>\n

Last week, the governor released his fiscal year 2018 budget, which announced the plan to outsource all DOT design work to contractors by FY2019. That amounts to the initial elimination of 76 design positions and \u201cup to 300 more to follow in future budgets,\u201d according to the budget overview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Doing this will not only continue to \u201ccut government,\u201d it \u201chas the added advantage of bolstering the private sector economy,\u201d as stated in the budget overview.<\/p>\n

Article 13 of the 3-year collective bargaining agreement<\/a> between ASEA, which represents the general government unit, and the State of Alaska that started this past July states, \u201cDecisions to contract out shall be made only after the affected agency has conducted a written feasibility study determining the potential costs and benefits that would result from contracting out the work in question.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the decision is made to contract out work and it results in lost positions, the state needs to notify the union and the union has 30 days to submit an alternate plan.<\/p>\n

The bargaining agreement<\/a> between the state and the Alaska Public Employees Association, another union affected by the design outsourcing, has similar language. APEA business manager Pete Ford said by phone Friday the union doesn\u2019t, at this time, plan to file a grievance. APEA represents the supervisory unit.<\/p>\n

Even though the Governor\u2019s budget is a proposal, in Duncan\u2019s mind, the damage has been done.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s made the decision to reduce the number of state employees doing this work and move the money to bolster the private sector economy. That\u2019s a clear statement in the governor\u2019s budget and that tells me the decision has been made,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cIf he would\u2019ve said, \u2018We intend to do a feasibility study,\u2019 maybe it wouldn\u2019t be a violation right now, but he\u2019s clearly violated the requirement in our contract that feasibility studies need to be done before the decision has been made.\u201d<\/p>\n

DOT anticipates that a request for proposals for a feasibility study will be issued around the end of January at the earliest, according to DOT spokesman Jeremy Woodrow. He said DOT is responsible for conducting the feasibility studies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to have the information that needs to be presented before the administration, before the Legislature, before the unions as quickly as possible so we can move forward with the decision-making process,\u201d Woodrow said.<\/p>\n

Woodrow stated, \u201ca feasibility study of this nature, at least to anyone\u2019s knowledge, has not been performed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re talking about up to 300 staff persons. It\u2019s not like there\u2019s a planning sheet of, \u2018These are the steps you need to follow when you\u2019re talking about laying off 300 people,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Budget documents<\/a> describing the design outsourcing do not mention any fiscal savings. Duncan said outsourcing design could cost the state twice as much as doing the work in-house.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is nothing more than just a political play to those who are demanding less state government and less state employees,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

At a Dec. 19 quarterly meeting between DOT commissioner Marc Luiken and about a hundred DOT employees in Juneau, Luiken said the call is to reduce state government and this is Walker\u2019s way of doing that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Luiken\u2019s words that I\u2019ve heard him say many times, \u2018Reduce the size of government at all costs,\u2019\u201d Woodrow said. \u201cThere is a call from legislators to reduce the size of state government and that\u2019s not necessarily just by the cost of state government but also the actual position numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n

DOT currently contracts 55 percent of all design work, according to the governor\u2019s budget narrative.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve quietly been doing that over the years. Every time we\u2019ve negotiated a contract, we have demanded that they stop doing that. We have asked for studies and they\u2019ve refused to give them because they\u2019ve not done them,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cTo go to this step now is way beyond what I ever expected from Governor Walker. I\u2019m surprised and shocked at how he\u2019s approached this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duncan said the class action grievance will be filed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The state\u2019s largest public employee union plans to file a class action grievance against the Walker administration regarding the outsourcing of design work within the Department of Transportation & Public Facilities. \u201cThat is a clear violation of our contract and we don\u2019t intend to stand by and let that go unchallenged,\u201d Jim Duncan, executive director […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-29359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29359"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=29359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}