AFSCME Labor Management MSH

December 20th 2018 1230PM

Administration Building

Attendance: Adam Castle, Matt Stenger, Marvin Sullivan, Ryan Cates, Emilio Florez, Steve Wilking, Kurt Crosby, Jake Schoenecker, Scott Melby, Carol Olsen, Lisa Vanderveen, Scott Melby, Alli Kuhlman, Michelle Chalin

Reflection/Celebration: Kurt-Thanks to carol and Brian Wills. Last minute toy drive. They did everything they could in 3 o 4 days. There are a lot of things in there already.

Carol-Besides the incident that happened on Saturday. November had 0 incidents due to client behavior. That hasn’t happened in two years. We have seen steady reduction in OSHA incidents related to client behavior. Staff are doing hard work. I am sorry about what happened on Saturday.

Standing Agenda Items:

1. OSHA Information-Handouts from Alli.
2. 2.      Overtime Information-Handouts from Alli. This is Atlas data.

Old Business:

Management

1. 1.      Expense Reimbursement: Michelle-Maxwell Bryant said meals are always taxed if not tied to overnight lodging. Everything is taxed if not input within 60 days of occurrence. Depending on how people code things too. Marvin-A lot of it comes down to parking even when it is within the 60 days. Put a communication out addressing that.

AFSCME

1. 1.      Rescinding Vacation: Cates-any follow up? Alli-yes, the language Jodi provided was for a different direction. Inside 14 days there isn’t a lot of language. If someone requests in that time frame, Jodi gets the notice and then works with the supervisor for needs information.
2. 2.      LPN Vacation Requests: Cates-Asking if they can request for 6 months also. Also looking for process for shift in progress. Carol-meeting scheduled for LPN on January 3rd to bring sups together to be part of shift in progress. Alli-vacation for a year out. Since shift in progress they aren’t competing. The time ahead isn’t competitive. The competition isn’t in shift in progress. Cates-have LPNs vacation been reduced or RNs increased? Carol-there hasn’t been a reduction. Matt-I mentioned LPNs being bumped to the floor. Alli-I have a meeting scheduled for those groups being impacted. We have set that up for January. Matt-Derek doesn’t supervise CRP. Alli-this is for all LPN concerns. Matt-what are we doing for these LPNs on the floor 10 shifts in a row. Lisa-I don’t believe that’s happening matt. Matt-Yes it is. She is being told this is your role now. The medical model but I don’t believe we should be doing this. Especially when we have 4 RNs working on any shift in that department. Bumping LPN to floor and RN fill the LPN role. Lisa-we did this previously and there were concerns so we are looking back to see why we shifted and try to make good decisions moving forward. We can look at that. Matt-there weren’t any concerns. It was a directive form Cari and we are all trained. Lisa-afscme brought up the concern because it took away overtime or FSS position. Matt-still not creating overtime no matter who it is. Lisa-I’m just telling you where it came from. Those were the concerns raised and we made changes. Kurt-when did that happen? Lisa-Around 2014 I think. We had unit 100 at the time. Carol-afscme said they want afscme covering the floor but we can look at it. Marvin-if I was hired as an LPN I would be frustrated doing someone else’s job on the floor. Carol-LPN covers a very broad role. Lisa-we can look at it. Kurt-causes a rift between RN and LPN. For one chosen over the other. Carol-that is why Lisa covered the history.

New Business:

Management

1. 1.      Atlas

Schedule posting for pay period 1/9 to 1/22: Judy-schedule will be posted on December 24th not the 25th. 

Status update for vacation requests: Atlas working on requesting vacation, if you don’t have the accruals, it will be denied. Some will have negative accruals going in because it was already requested and they don’t have the time. No plan to make them rescind but as those days come up, they must have that time available and cant make any new ones until they have enough accruals. Updated 1 to 2 days after the pay period. Takes into account comp as well. Jodi is project lead for the app. Forensics is test site. No time line but they are working on it. Don’t know what features, etc. Rumor that forensics is the only one getting it but that isn’t true. It is just the test site to start. I will bring updates as I get more information.  Melby-it won’t work perfectly in the beginning. Let us know of any bugs you find.

1. Carol-physical plant change is not occurring on January 9th. Being delayed due to a lot of issues brought forward.

AFSCME

1. 1.      Transitions Schedule/over-grant vacation, short on holidays: Crates-this holiday season an issue. Gave extra spots in advance so when it came to 28 days out, senior staff couldn’t get them. Contractually we have 28 days out. Carol-is it people who bid successfully and came in with it. Cates-I am not sure, it’s possible. Just transition. Carol-a lot of senior staff coming from the nursing home. We will look into that.
2. 2.      GMW Schedule. Weekends and holiday numbers: cates-weekends they get 3 and on holidays less. Will they get a 3rd working on the holidays like weekends? Carol-Can we get back to you with what got scheduled? Cates-and what they plan for the future.
3. 3.      Radios. Screened radios for A-Team: Cates-brought it up months ago. Getting screened radio on every unit for a team. Carol-we must not have given you a concrete answer. That is a concrete no. cates-supervisors etc. don’t respond to incidents and they have screened. We need to be looking at best practice. Its not best practice when people have these that don’t respond. Kurt-when you have a screened radio, we need to sit and wait for BIR. Steve said when a person hits a man down button, we can’t override that. It took 20 seconds for them before master can step over and say where that is. If someone has that and sees it on a screen, they can respond. It’s very disheartening. The person getting beaten, every second counts. Err on the side of caution. Reports of people running by the. There is no positive way to spin this. It’s about someone being assaulted. Steve-we have been dealing with radio issues for 8 months. Through all of these issues, we are struggling with overriding the man down. I have seen an instructor say “repeatedly hit the man down button if needed” we do not have this function, do not do that. Best practice for resources. We are asking a team to just look at the screen. If we continue to have this button pressed, that time frame becomes very long. Carol-you can override it but if someone continues to hit it? Steve-I could not override the man down. I have not received communication that has been fixed. Carol-I will check on that. It would be beneficial for if something happens to have a screen so they can get moving. Carol-I hear you. Kurt-I work on Tamarac and walked into see this going on. What do you want me to tell staff? Carol-that is not best practice for an ICS. We are teaching what the best practice is. Marvin-outside of this facility ICS isn’t taught that way. First thing we do, I carry emergency radio, and I look at it and can see who is carrying it. You have a general idea where that person is. Kurt-someone did this research and taught in good faith but how is this the best practice when you can save a couple of seconds? Tell that person to stand there and watch someone kick a dummy for 20 seconds. Carol-caution you on using Saturday nights example. I understand though what you are saying. At this point we are not intending on giving a team members the radios. Scott-I am not sure about any study out there but as someone who has been involved in a lot of phases here. It is much more effective to hear the BIR that it is to look at a radio. Marvin-in this facility I would know numbers. Scott-do they say use activation phase. Marvin-but is man down the only way to initiate…yes. There is a pinpointed area. Marvin-even sheriffs in the community, it shows a number that belongs to the person so they have a general idea. Kurt-I’m just asking where this directive came from. We are the ones on the floor doing it. If we are telling you that this would work better…if we can get a 5 second head start I don’t understand. It’s at our disposal right now. Matt-when we brought this up, it was said to be a cost issue. We asked the difference and it’s pretty minimal. Carol-it is not a cost issue. It was a decision we didn’t want people relying on a screen. Steve-I ask that you reconsider because the inability of us to override a man down. I had a conversation with that individual about what he was teaching. There may be a communication barrier with what is going on with the radios and the instructors that aren’t master control employees. Carol-do we need to communicate that to the instructors? Steve-yes. Scott-I will let people know this as soon as I can. Emilio-it’s been 8 months and we still aren’t following radio procedure on overnights. Carol-way better to do radio checks when you get a radio. Emilio-procedure says that we are to do radio checks on overnights to ensure they are working updated November 11th. Carol-that’s the message you need to communicate. Do not rely on overnights. Always check your own. Steve-we get hundreds of radio checks and we handle them.  Cates-I just want to say that I was at Walmart the other night and their employee’s radios have screens on them. Matt-when you switch over to new times, every one is going to do a radio check. You are going to overload. Scott-they are working on the policy for the best way to check these radios. Has anyone ever come across a non-working radio? Marvin-yes. Emilio-it’s the system we are more concerned with. Scott-if people are having concerns we need to do a radio check. The policy was written with the old system. If it comes down to the control center being overly busy with these we can revisit that too. The policy has to be adapted to our system. It hasn’t been finalized yet. Kurt-people are frustrated that why can’t these just work. We keep coming down to tweaking it. It’s hard to swallow that we still have to do this. Scott-anything we do is going to have constant adjustments. The old radio wasn’t working as well but we had to replace it. I’m sorry they don’t work as perfectly as you do.
4. 4.      Patient nails being kept long despite safety concerns: Cates-issue with staff being scratched up. We used to have an expectation to clip their nails. Judy-staff are going to follow up on this. We definitely addressed it right away. It is an expectation.
5. 5.      Cedar Unit short a Lead position which eliminates a weekend slot for days off: Cates-any plan to get the lead back. Scott-issue a lead or days off. Cates-its both but it takes a Fri/sat off. You moved it to utility and they don’t get Fri/sat off anyway. Like to see lead put back into area we took it from. Jake-it’s definitely important to get the lead spot back. Scott-when utility was created and had a lead spot we reduced 600 by 1. Ill take a look at it.
6. 6.      Investigations and disciplines are creating rumors and fear: Cates-a lot of them recently focused on Aspen. Is there a reason on the aspen one? Coachings about holding a door open with foot. Carol-certain people because of being part of Jensen or PSR. More scrutiny by licensing so we are always answering. We might look at video if someone is injured or if licensing is asking questions. We need to follow policy and procedure. We are going to hold people accountable. Cates-are we monitoring just to monitor? Scott-no, we don’t have time for that. We look when things occur. Carol-on willow there was a lot of tension. There was a lot of requests from licensing. Just this week they said they are not going to issue a citation. Staff did well. And when they get documentation that doesn’t look good, they are going to ask about it and what we did to correct it. Judy-there are also a lot of things they are seeing staff doing well. There is a lot of scrutiny of the guy on aspen and on cedar. Licensing is asking “how did someone get hurt?” Cates-there were staff that were being questioned about what happened. Licensing had a photo but still asked where the person was hit. Like they are trying to trip the person up. Carol-I can’t say why they would ask that. Licensing does their own thing. We are not related. Cates-a lot of investigations on both sides so it seemed like they were related. Kurt-another things is to look at the policy and how it goes from a manual restraint to an escort. If you use your body it says that is manual restraint but it doesn’t say anything about struggling. Carol-we have done a lot of training. We want direction coming from nursing. If there isn’t clarity we need to do more training. We have a full quality dept. when something happens we ask them to look at it and identify risks and what we did. Our goal is to have this to show licensing so they don’t want to come in. I think we are getting really good at this. Matt-we understand when we go hands on it’s an escort not a restraint. Now if you are moving someone, now that’s a restraint. What they see is different that what we are. Judy-our definition comes from statute with all of those things. Carol-we can definitely look at it. Keeping someone in their environment is seclusion. But we have added this into our training. Licensing will see it as not letting him out, it is seclusion. We have never disciplined based on a licensing ruling. I know we did training but we may need to do more.  Michelle-the vulnerable adult office may have resulted in more investigations as well. We used to just get responses that said “thank you, we are don” Now they have more people and resources where they have actually been more involved.
7. 7.      Licensing fishing on Aspen: Above

Add On:

1. 1.       Tim Witty assigning intermittents to unit’s weeks ahead of time: Marvin-Why are we back to this practice again after about a year ago it was fixed? I had conversation with ODS office and they specified the staff but don’t want to create bad environment with him. Carol-Scott, you will follow up right? Scott-yep.
2. 2.      Lead List Exclusion: Kurt-staff injured on duty and wasn’t able to check his emails. Lead list came out and he wasn’t able to get on there because he was out with injury and was told “no”. I am asking that if someone has a hardship and isn’t able to access. Carol- I remember this situation and I can’t remember the rationale but I will look at it and get back to you. It opened up some ripple effect and concern amongst your members but ill get back to you.
3. 3.      Hope to get another meeting that was supposed to be this morning and would like to reschedule. Alli-yeah
4. 4.      Carol-I’m sure you saw the bulletin about no more CRP? Matt-yes, we are just getting a lot of questions about it for clarification.

Adjourned at 142pm