October 23, 2003
Changes coming to civil service
The state of Washington is in the process of making a major change in its civil service system. It’s a change that might — or might not — affect the 12,000 classified staff members who work at the University.
The change is mandated by the Personnel System Reform Act of 2002, which calls for a new human resource system to replace the one that has been in force since 1960. But the law doesn’t spell out the components of that system — only that whatever system is devised must meet certain criteria — so the state Department of Personnel has been working to develop a nearly final system by the end of the year.
That’s because negotiations with unions begin during the first part of the new year.
“State law says we have to start negotiations in the first half of the year and finish by October of 2004,” said Howard Pripas, the UW’s director of labor relations. “Then the contract will be effective in July 2005.”
The new civil service system will also go into effect in July of 2005. During negotiations, the union and the University could agree to adopt some but not all aspects of the state system. That’s why classified staff at the University may or may not be governed by the new state system.
Of the 12,000 classified staff at the UW, about 10,000 are already represented by unions. There are petitions pending to represent 1,100 of the remaining 2,000, according to Pripas, meaning that potentially 90 percent of the UW’s classified staff could be unionized.
Also, since several unions represent UW staff, the contracts covering the various unionized employees could be different, depending on the final agrement that is reached between the UW and a particular union.
Meanwhile, the state is continuing its process toward developing a system. Initially, the Department of Personnel (DOP) did some research about what other states are doing, then convened work groups to focus on ideas or concepts for different aspects of the rules. There were five teams, and the UW had representation in four of the five, said Elizabeth Coveney, director of administration and information systems for Human Resources. UW managers also participated in focus groups invited to react to the “first draft” of the new system.
Since then the DOP has been collecting feedback statewide and making adjustments in what it’s proposing, Coveney says.
Essentially the new system is an attempt to create more flexibility and efficiency. The law mandates, for example, that the current 2,400 job classifications be substantially reduced. The proposal now on the table would trim that down to 800 by creating job categories, such as the “office support” category, with four levels within most categories reflecting the skills needed to do the jobs at that level.
“The classification part of the proposal is reminiscent of what we already have here with the professional staff system,” Coveney said. “But we have some areas where we have very identifiable, specific occupational categories, such as in health care, where you really need a scheme that discretely identifies those niche occupations. In other areas you may have jobs that band together. We’d be looking for a mix of approaches that would reflect our needs to recruit and retain staff.”
The proposed new system also calls for salary ranges to be consolidated into fewer, wider bands and for merit to play a greater role relative to seniority in decisions about pay raises.
“Unlike today, where progress is based on longevity, they’re envisioning coming up with a scheme that has some longevity increase and then beyond that, within the range, progress might be on satisfactory or better performances,” Coveney explained. “You might progress from your starting point to a certain point on longevity, but beyond that point it would be more merit based.”
In fact, the system would place greater emphasis on merit overall — in decisions about promotions and layoffs, for example.
Another key area of change is in disciplinary actions, where a “positive discipline” approach is recommended. The UW would welcome such a change, Coveney said.
“Traditionally the discipline model of the rules is very punitive. It’s focused on one-way communication — documenting, reprimanding and punishing according to the rules. That’s in contrast with what we’ve negotiated in past Local 925 (one campus union) contracts — developing an action plan for demonstrating necessary changes, having a dialogue with employees and engaging both managers and employees to share responsibility for fixing the problem.”
As the state process continues, what the University will be pushing for most is flexibility. “Since the law provides that higher education institutions should be able to have local administration under the rules, we would urge that the rules set the criteria, then expect the school to develop a policy or procedure to apply that meets those criteria, as opposed to trying to come up with a one size fits all process,” Coveney said.
Because the University is the only state agency operating two major academic medical centers, their administration is one area where the University would like more flexibility than the current system provides. “We would like to be able to manage the medical centers, from a human resources perspective, in a way that is more consistent with certain practices of our competitors,” Pripas said. “We would want rules that give us greater flexibility.”
For example, the current requirement of developing a detailed survey and business case to justify locally competitive wages for nurses is lengthy and labor intensive, Coveney said. “It doesn’t allow you to time the market in the way you would want your hospital to do. It’s not that the rules are unreasonable; it’s just that the process is unwieldy.”
State officials have been meeting with HR and union officials statewide as they work to finalize a proposal. They want to position the unions and employers to be able to engage in collective bargaining with some basic framework of what the rules will look like by the end of this year, Coveney said.
While the bargaining is going on, the state will be going through the public rule-making process, including required public hearings. The DOP director is slated to adopt rules in July 2004, with implementation in July 2005.
The state has created a Web page, http://hr.dop.wa.gov/hrreform, that outlines the details of its proposed system and allows interested parties to provide feedback.
