City Hall Monitor: Minneapolis Council members poised to de-unionize their staff

UPDATED Their union calls it a labor issue with a capital L. The city council members they work for (but one) call themselves DFL. Today the 13 council associates at Minneapolis City Hall are poised to lose their union and civil service status—at the hands of the City Council.

The proposal: Convert the 13 council associate jobs at Minneapolis City Hall—now under an AFSCME union contract and civil service protection—into fire-at-will, politically appointed positions. The union, AFSCME, calls it a labor issue with a capital L, yet the largely DFL council (12 of 13) appears poised to de-unionize its own staff. The women in the jobs now would have a period in which to decide whether to remain council associates, to become appointees, or switch to a different union job with the city.

Over two weeks and three committee meetings, Sandy Colvin Roy is the only DFL council member who has signaled opposition to the proposal. (Cam Gordon, the council’s lone Green Party member, has too.) Yesterday the council avoided a discussion of the issue at their Committee of the Whole meeting because they were in a rush—ironically, to attend an employee-appreciation event.

UPDATE: Colvin Roy and Gordon were indeed the only council members to vote at the July 25 full council meeting against the measure — which summarily puts council associates into management team positions without increasing their pay range. (Council Member Don Samuels was absent.)

Each of Minneapolis’ 13 wards has an office with three staff: the council member, a council aide, and a council associate. The council member is elected and appoints the aide. The council associate technically works for the city clerk, who keep their jobs but sometimes shuffle ward assignments when terms start.

The proposal requires the council to determine that the council associate positions meet five criteria under state law, including management team responsibilities and reporting to a city department head. Tim Giles, the city’s director of employee relations, told a council committee last week that the job met the criteria, although Gordon called that a stretch. Giles—who after being introduced began his presentation saying, “Thank you … I think”—conceded no city staff at the council associates’ level (Grade 5) now hold appointed positions.

In fact, says AFSCME business representative Jill Kielblock, the lowest city staff now in appointed jobs are at Grade 9. Ironically, the council associates recently asked for a review of their work responsibilities in hopes of moving up a grade—but were turned down.

In 2005, AFSCME endorsed eight candidates who were elected to the city council and will vote today whether to strip the union of 13 City Halls jobs: Barbara Johnson, Sandy Colvin Roy, Gary Schiff, Robert Lillegren, Diane Hofstede, Scott Benson, Don Samuels and Ralph Remington.

The Minnesota Independent asked all 13 council members by email for their views on the issue. Here, in full, are the three responses received: [QUOTE FORMAT]

Ralph Remington: I’m for the conversion. Every council member and their respective offices are accountable to their constituencies. Council Members cannot be held accountable for employees that are inherited and not hired. This move would give city council members greater quality control for more enhanced and accountable constituency service. I am a union member as well as a former union organizer and this has nothing to do with unions and everything to do with political accountability. Council offices are political entities. The current union employees could choose to remain union. So there wouldn’t be an actual loss of union jobs. Instead there would be a shrinking of union eligible positions. The newly reclassified associate positions, would be political appointees.

Robert Lilligren:Thanks for reaching out about this, Chris. I am supportive of the proposed action. It is clear to me that most council members are seeking a way to have more discretion over their choices of an office Associate and more flexibility in managing their staffs throughout their terms. I am certainly interested in adequate protections for the people who currently hold these positions.

Cam Gordon: I have some questions and concerns about this that I plan to begin addressing at tomorrows meeting.

I understand the reasons that Council leadership is bringing this forward, and I agree that Council Members need greater capacity to hold their staff accountable. We have certainly had difficulty earlier this term with holding certain specific Associates accountable for less than stellar behavior. It’s clear that the current management structure, in which Associates are accountable to the Clerk’s Office, could be improved.

However, I’m not convinced that the proposal to make these positions appointed may not be the best or only answer, and I do not believe that other options have been seriously considered. I agree that there will be some benefits to having appointed Associates, including clearer accountability to the Council Member and a greater capacity for elected officials to control the constituent relations of their offices. However, I believe that there are also some serious potential downsides. It will make the Associate position far more political than it has been historically. The ramifications of this are unclear, but it could negatively impact relations between Council offices. More importantly, with the capacity to bring on one’s “own people,” new Council Members could lose the invaluable institutional memory that our current Associates bring. My office is a great example of this. My Associate, Nancy Olsen, worked for the past two Ward 2 Council Members, Paul Zerby and Joan Campbell. This has been a great help in understanding specific past issues. When my Aide and I started in January of 2006, we found that the Associates – our own and those of other offices – were one of the most helpful groups in helping us to understand the vagaries of Council procedure.

I have heard from some of the Associates, including my own, that they have serious concerns about being switched from civil service to appointed positions. For example, what happens to my Associate if I decide to appoint her, and then decline to run for another term? Will she be offered the option to return to a civil service position, or will she be terminated?

Most importantly, though, I simply do not believe that the Council can honestly make the findings we are required by ordinance to make before changing the Associates to appointed positions. Those findings are as follows:

20.1010. City council to establish positions. The city council may, pursuant to this article, establish unclassified positions in designated departments of the city that meet the following criteria:

(1) The person occupying the position must report to the head of the designated city department or the designated city department head’s deputy.

(2) The person occupying the position must be part of the designated department head’s management team.

(3) The duties of the position must involve significant discretion and substantial involvement in the development, interpretation, or implementation of city or department policy.

(4) The duties of the position must not primarily require technical expertise where continuity in the position would be significant.

(5) There is a need for the person occupying the position to be accountable to, loyal to, and compatible with the mayor, the city council, and the department head.

The city council must adopt findings on whether the criteria in this section are met before an unclassified position is established. The city council shall establish the terms and conditions of employment for all unclassified positions, or may delegate that function to the director of human resources. (2003-Or-131, § 1, 11-7-03)

Clearly criterion #5 is applicable. I believe that the rest are either highly dubious or flatly non-applicable. Criteria 1 and 2 only make sense if we decide that Council Members are “department heads,” which I think is simply not accurate. As a Council Member, I do not have sole authority over the staff of any department. And if the “department” I am heading is my Ward office, this proposal would produce “departments” composed entirely of management.

Criterion #3 is similarly problematic. Perhaps it is different in other offices, but my Associate does not have “significant discretion” or “substantial involvement in the development, interpretation, or implementation” of policy. She schedules meetings for the office, keeps track of the Ward budget, does much of our constituent service, all extremely valuable tasks but, in my mind, impossible to construe as “development, interpretation or implementation” of policy. If the Council chooses to push this boundary this far, it’s difficult to see which City positions could not be considered appropriate to be changed to appointed positions.

Lastly, Criterion #4 is ambiguous at best. In my mind these positions do require “technical expertise,” in many areas and I am convinced that “continuity in the position” is very important.

I guess I am leaning to voting against this proposal tomorrow. One thing I think we should do is bring the union to the table with the City Clerk and Council leadership and look at more options about how we can make the selection and supervision of Associates better before we make any final decision on taking away these union jobs.