Travis County Commissioners Court
April 7, 2009,
Item 12
>> number 12.
12.
consider and take appropriate action regarding facilities management department's responses to the December 15, 2008 grievance panel recommendations.
>> good afternoon.
alicia perez, executive manager for administrative operations.
i have here with me roger el khoury, the director for facilities management and john carr who is the administrator and does a lot of the personnel and administration facilities management.
wack in December, there was a -- back in December there was a grievance panel convened for a particular employee who has been terminated because of an incident that we thought was egregious enough for that particular action.
the procedure here in Travis County is that an employee has a right to appeal.
the appeals process takes the employee to a grievance panel that is made up of -- of other Travis County employees.
then they are appealed to the grievance panel decision in Commissioners court.
i think this case was -- was before you in February.
i'm sorry, March 10th.
you heard the appeal.
when the -- when the grievance panel heard the appeal from mr.
sims on December the 15th, they came back with several lists of recommendations for the department.
the court, several of you, had questions, specific questions on some of the items like the handling of hazardous materials and others I think just wanted to hear back a response from the department on the recommendations.
we have that response for you.
the process, unfortunately, does not provide for the panel, the grievance panel to discuss their recommendations with the department before they are made.
as a result, I think that you will see that some of the recommendations that were made are processes or procedures that we have in place already, the training much supervisors, the handling of safety materials.
i have the -- I had the staffing back and even -- staff go back and even include some of the signoff sheets where the very gentleman, the employee that had said that he did not know of those signout sheets for the hazard materials or had not been trained indeed utilized them on several occasions.
to sign out hazard materials.
we also have provided agendas of some of the weekly meetings where these particular issues were discussed and were part of the agenda that provided the information to employees on appropriate procedures and processes.
we did find some of the recommendations from the panel helpful.
i think they are good reminders from us to always be vigilant about documentation of incidents to make sure that they are done in writing.
and so to that the director, roger el khoury, met with all his staff on March the 11th, all of the supervisors, again to remind them of the appropriate procedures for one progressive discipline for management of hazardous material for -- for dispensing information on these policies and procedures to all individuals.
we have a whole -- a whole variety of trades that work for us.
we have plumbers, electricians, carpenters and the electricians and the plumbers that we have, and we have general mechanics also.
so I think it was a good reminder for us to make sure that they were all aware of the safety issues that we want them to be -- to tend to each and every day and to some of the -- to some of the other procedures that we have in place and make sure that they are reminded and that they are followed.
we provided a response to each one of the panel's recommendations and are prepared to answer any questions which the court may have on this?
questions?
do we think -- is it our position that we are doing -- are doing everything that -- that the panel recommended?
>> roger el khoury, director of the facilities management department.
we -- we look at the recommendation and took them seriously and look at all the issues and some of them, yes, we have been doing them, some of them we need some refresher on all of these.
i believe we get to a point now where all of the supervisors understand that.
especially on the recommendation, everything has to be written, you know, from here on.
even an instruction given to employees.
so this will protect the employee as well, just provides -- and the department.
and the main thing also that I would like to mention to you is about the material safety data sheet.
this is very important that we have taken it seriously on using a hazard chemical.
we will not use hazard chemical during a business hour and we don't use it after business hour if it not necessary.
if it's necessary we will make sure that nobody is in the building and use is accordingly.
and we set the policy for the material safety data sheet and we run it by risk management and they approve our procedures and we enforce it as we speak.
>> okay.
questions?
thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>> it's -- this is helpful.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, April 7, 2009 2:03 PM