The below post is taken from the Video Blog, the Subject Matter Minute. If it’s a little hard to read, it’s because it’s taken from the spoken word. You can view the episode on YouTube if you would like. Find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzWLKctL1PM
If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to view it from Google Drive.
You can also listen to an audio version: Episode #4: Grievances.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the subject matter minute! Thanks for joining me. My name is Matt Nagy, and I work for A&I… specifically human resources division. I’m a trainer. Welcome to episode number four.
Before I go into that topic, I want to thank, once again, the subject matter expert from last month’s episode. Her name is Karla Smith, she’s fabulous, I work with her and she runs the mediation program for state employees. So if you have a problem that needs mediated… first of all, go watch episode 3 and then call, email, or chat up Karla.
Without further ado, we’re going to jump right into the episode number 4 topic which is grievances. First of all, I want to thank Russell Webb who works for hard and is the grievances and appeals guru. He is my subject matter expert for this episode. He got me the information, and it did it quick, so I want to thank you Russell.
Grievances are a dispute between you, the employee, and management. The dispute is about a statute, a rule, an executive order, or a policy concerning personnel practices or working conditions. I know that is a bit of a mouthful, but it’s important because there’s a lot of things you can’t grieve. So grievances specifically are about, again, a statute, a rule, an executive order, or a policy concerning personnel practices or working conditions. These are the things you can grieve.
Things you can’t grieve are:
- Things that are out of the control of the agency head; things like compensation benefits, contributions, those sorts of things.
- Discrimination
- Dismissals
- Involuntary separation due to a riff
- PMI rating
Most grievances focus around something like a disciplinary action.. so a letter of reprimand, a suspension, or an involuntary reappointment. Basically if one of these actions occurs and you don’t agree with it, you can grieve. You can file a grievance with the agency head and then the agency head and you will get together and have a conference and try to hash things out.
That’s the first step. If you can’t hash things out, then HRD is called in. Once Human Resources Division is called in, they will form a grievance committee. Actually they help, but basically there’s three people on the grievance committee and you get to pick one, the agency gets to pick one, and then those two people pick the third. It’s kind of interesting that way, right? You get a grievance committee set up of three people.
Let me back up a bit. You get to pick a person, but there’s a lot of rules as far as how close they can be to you. Basically, they can’t be involved in the grievance in any way; they can’t work at either party’s agency; and they can’t be an advocate for either party. So basically they have to be unbiased and neutral. So while you do get a pick a person, and you would love to have a good coworker that you work with all the time or a friend, you really can’t pick those people. In my opinion, the best bet is to pick somebody you know is honest and fair and will render the right decision.
So the grievance committee is formed, and what they do first is look at the written record… basically the previous stuff from your meeting with the agency. They look at the facts, and then they render a decision. With the decision they can modify, they can affirm, or they can reverse the action that is the issue.
If they don’t, a hearing can be held. If the committee is unable to take the written facts and decide on the issue then the next thing is a hearing. A hearing is a little bit more formal in that you can introduce new evidence, and you can bring in people to testify.
So now the committee takes all the old information, the new information, and listens to testimony and again renders a decision. Again, they can modify it, they can affirm it, or they can reverse the action that is a dispute.
At this point the grievance process is really over. If you disagree with their decision you can appeal it, but the appeals process is involved and has multiple steps and timelines and is kind of separate. As far as we’re concerned the grievance process is done when they render their decision.
Keep your eyes open for another episode on appeals. I will do that down the road. Again, I want to thank Russell Webb for getting me the information on this, and you can contact him at russell.webb1@wyo.gov. I hope you don’t have to use the grievance process but it’s there to protect you. Thank you for making it through episode number four of the subject matter minute!
Here is the full episode!