{"id":58,"date":"2017-04-10T19:09:48","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T19:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/?p=58"},"modified":"2017-10-12T15:17:19","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T15:17:19","slug":"grievances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/grievances\/","title":{"rendered":"Subject Matter Minute, Episode #4: Grievances"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The below post is taken from the Video Blog, the Subject Matter Minute. If it&#8217;s a little hard to read, it&#8217;s because it&#8217;s taken from the spoken word. You can view the episode on YouTube if you would like. Find it here: \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ym4-SUY4MuY\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OzWLKctL1PM<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to view it from Google Drive.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You can also listen to an audio version: Episode #4: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wyomingtraining.com\/audio\/Grievances.mp3\">Grievances<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Hello,\u00a0and welcome to another episode of the\u00a0subject matter minute! Thanks for joining\u00a0me. My name is Matt Nagy, and\u00a0I work for\u00a0A&amp;I&#8230; specifically human resources\u00a0division. I&#8217;m a trainer.\u00a0Welcome to episode\u00a0number four.<\/p>\n<p>Before I go into that topic, I want to thank, once again, the subject\u00a0matter expert from last month&#8217;s episode. Her name is Karla Smith, she&#8217;s\u00a0fabulous, I work with her and she runs\u00a0the mediation program for state employees. So if you have a problem that\u00a0needs mediated&#8230; first of all, go watch\u00a0episode 3 and then call, email, or chat up Karla.<\/p>\n<p>Without further\u00a0ado, we&#8217;re going to jump right into the episode\u00a0number 4 topic which is grievances. First of all, I want to thank\u00a0Russell Webb who works for hard and is\u00a0the grievances and appeals guru. He is\u00a0my subject matter expert for this episode. He got\u00a0me the information, and it did it quick, so I want to thank you Russell.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-76\" src=\"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2017\/04\/upsetPerson.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2017\/04\/upsetPerson.jpg 1000w, http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2017\/04\/upsetPerson-300x200.jpg 300w, http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2017\/04\/upsetPerson-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/>Grievances are a dispute between you, the employee, and management. The\u00a0dispute is about a statute, a rule, an\u00a0executive order, or a policy concerning\u00a0personnel practices or working\u00a0conditions. I know that is a bit\u00a0of a\u00a0mouthful, but it&#8217;s important\u00a0because there&#8217;s a lot of things you\u00a0can&#8217;t grieve. So grievances\u00a0specifically are\u00a0about, again, a statute, a rule, an executive\u00a0order, or a policy concerning personnel\u00a0practices or working conditions. These\u00a0are the things you can grieve.<\/p>\n<p>Things\u00a0you <strong>can&#8217;t<\/strong> grieve are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Things that are\u00a0out of the control of the agency head; things like compensation benefits, contributions, those sorts of things.<\/li>\n<li>Discrimination<\/li>\n<li>Dismissals<\/li>\n<li>Involuntary separation due to a\u00a0riff<\/li>\n<li>PMI rating<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Most\u00a0grievances focus around something like a\u00a0disciplinary action.. so a letter of\u00a0reprimand, a suspension, or an involuntary\u00a0reappointment. Basically if one of these actions\u00a0occurs and you don&#8217;t agree with it, you\u00a0can grieve. You can file a grievance with\u00a0the agency head and then the agency head\u00a0and you will get together and have a\u00a0conference and try to hash things out.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the first step. If you\u00a0can&#8217;t hash things out, then HRD\u00a0is called in. Once\u00a0Human Resources Division is called in, they will form a grievance committee. Actually\u00a0they help, but basically there&#8217;s\u00a0three people on the grievance committee and you get to pick one, the agency gets to\u00a0pick one, and then those two people pick\u00a0the third. It&#8217;s\u00a0kind of interesting that\u00a0way, right? You get a grievance committee\u00a0set up of three people.<\/p>\n<p>Let me back up a bit.\u00a0You get to\u00a0pick a person, but there&#8217;s a lot of rules\u00a0as far as how close they can be to you. Basically, they\u00a0can&#8217;t be involved in the grievance in\u00a0any way; they can&#8217;t work at either\u00a0party&#8217;s agency; and they can&#8217;t be an\u00a0advocate for either party. So\u00a0basically they have to be unbiased and neutral. So while you do get a pick a\u00a0person, and you would love to have a good coworker that you work with\u00a0all the time or a friend, you really\u00a0can&#8217;t pick those people. In my opinion, the best bet is to pick\u00a0somebody you know is honest and fair and\u00a0will render the right decision.<\/p>\n<p>So the grievance committee is\u00a0formed, and what they do first is look at the written record&#8230; basically the previous stuff from your\u00a0meeting with the agency. They look at the\u00a0facts, and then they render a decision. With the decision they\u00a0can modify, they can affirm, or they can\u00a0reverse the action that is the\u00a0issue.<\/p>\n<p>If they don&#8217;t, a\u00a0hearing can be held. If the committee\u00a0is unable to take the written facts and\u00a0decide on the issue then the next thing\u00a0is a hearing. A\u00a0hearing is a\u00a0little bit more formal in that you can\u00a0introduce new evidence, and you can bring in\u00a0people to testify.<\/p>\n<p>So now the\u00a0committee takes all the old information, the new information, and listens to testimony\u00a0and again renders a decision. Again, they can modify it, they can affirm it, or they can reverse\u00a0the action that is a dispute.<\/p>\n<p>At this point the grievance process\u00a0is really over. If you disagree with\u00a0their decision you can appeal it, but the\u00a0appeals process is involved and has multiple steps and timelines and is kind\u00a0of separate. As far as we&#8217;re concerned\u00a0the grievance process is done when they\u00a0render their decision.<\/p>\n<p>Keep your\u00a0eyes open for another episode on appeals. I will do that down the road. Again, I want to thank Russell Webb\u00a0for getting me the information on this, and you can contact him at russell.webb1@wyo.gov.\u00a0I\u00a0hope you don&#8217;t have to use\u00a0the grievance process but it&#8217;s there to\u00a0protect you. Thank you for making it\u00a0through episode number four of the\u00a0subject matter minute!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here is the full episode!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/0B4SsDqC9CMbLV05oTmFLU3BFYTg\/preview\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The below post is taken from the Video Blog, the Subject Matter Minute. If it&#8217;s a little hard to read, it&#8217;s because it&#8217;s taken from the spoken word. You can view the episode on YouTube if you would like. Find it here: \u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OzWLKctL1PM If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/grievances\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Subject Matter Minute, Episode #4: Grievances&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-benefits","category-processes","category-services"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182,"href":"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wyomingtraining.com\/subject-matter-minute-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}