2019-12-18 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board December 18, 2019 So, gentlemen, any thoughts on this? Keep going? MR. BRILHANTE: Okay. So, if you take—there's a purple paper in your envelope? Those are my goals for this coming fiscal year July 1st, 2019 to June 30th, 2020. I look at that—we're in December already. So, some of these goals have already been discussed. So, what we're—Goal number 1 is going to be the continuation of the reorg. for Health and Safety. Of course, the ultimate goal is that we want to introduce department-by-department safety training and programs, so that with the ultimate goal of reducing injuries associated with work comp claims. So, like I said, we did the reorg., we—in this current budget submittal, we're going to be—we requested that we fund the previously unfunded training position with the goal for that position is to assist. We have one trainer right now, officially, on staff. This trainer will be our second trainer and they'll be able to assist in the various programs. We are identifying safety programs—health and safety programs which are different than programs which come under the CDL—the Commercial Driver License training program. I think, in the past, the two have been interwound with each other as far as training goes, from our department. And what we're going to do is, the departments that have CDL or require CDL driver training, they already have trainers within their department—the three I mentioned. And so, we're going to ensure that they are, those trainers are more responsive in addressing more of the CDL training. We're going to pull back from our driver training requirements—not requirements—but topic and areas of discussion—and it's going to be more health and safety related—proper lifting techniques; proper operation of, say, a forklift or those type of things come to mind; AED type of training—more safe—health and safety training is what we're going to look at. And we're hoping to—that will help us with the reduction of some of our claims. CHR. NAMAHOE: May I make a comment here? MR. BRILHANTE: Sure. CHR. NAMAHOE: So, health and safety is critical. Something that we all saw happen in the past year in 2018 with the lava. We saw Civil Defense and we saw roads—they worked above and beyond, especially, the exempt employees—the leadership. I turn—I saw, personally, people walk off the job. They left—and all the institutional knowledge went with them. They went into the private sector because they couldn't strike that balance in the long run of needing to go home rest, having children—whatever life—whatever their work life balances demanded of them. And so, we lose people that—the ones that are going through my mind have been—worked for our government for at least ten years. They were willing to walk away from all of that. So, I know that that's not necessarily—that might not be who you're talking about, but if you can take Page 12