2019-12-18 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board December 18, 2019 right. It was not one—it's not our way or the highways—it's kind of, a give and take. And what we did was we revised our policy to adopt the issue—the issues that were raised. We adopted what City and County of Honolulu—we drafted their language into our policy. So, revised our policy to reflect City and County of Honolulu, and that City and County of Honolulu has been accepted by UPW. So, hopefully, we're just waiting to get the greenlight from them. Once that comes into play—once all the unions agree with the policy then we'll go out—we'll roll out our training program. And, again, it'll be just like how we did in the past where we open it up County-wide. We have our labor relations specialist, and our professional development person go out and provide training. It's usually a one-day training and we just go through the policy and the requirements of managers and supervisors—and we also open it up to the employees—that way everybody is on the same page, `cause part of the rules of discipline is— there's a rule in place and everybody knows the rule. So—and that's why we're having to take those steps. So, that's a on-going—Goal number 2 is on-going. Goal number 3, is develop a department-by-department safety program to help reduce the frequency and expenses associated with workers compensation claims. I'm going to touch upon this more in my director's report, which will be—it's on Item number 8 on the agenda. But, basically, we're continuing to do the revision for our safety program—our Safety Division. We separated—previously, our Safety Division and our Workers Comp Division came under one manager. And so, it was kind of like a very broad area of responsibility, but it came under the Work Comp/Safety Division. I've since re-orged our Work Comp/Safety Division, so I separated the two. So, now I have a division manager solely for work comp and I took our previous work comp/safety manager and assigned him to just strictly safety. So, we've had weekly meetings addressing moving forward how best to reorg. the safety division. We're looking at funding a previous position that— position in training that was unfunded—and incorporating that, so that we can have two trainers and one manager, and then we can start going out and start doing more safety-centered training with the various departments. Right now, three of the departments—Public Works, DEM, and Department of Water Supply— they have their own safety training officers. The unfortunate part of that is they're strictly assigned to the CDL—the driver—the commercial driver certification training. So, they don't do much training in the other areas of proper fire extinguisher use, AED, first aid—all those other type of safety training measures. So, the rationale for funding that third training position is so that we can start offering those type of trainings to the various departments. So, those were my three goals. It's—Goal 3, likewise, is a continuation of last year's. Page 10