Listen To Employees

For those who didn’t catch the entire story, the county administration fired the director of the mill. The mill volunteers thought that was unjustified and urged the council to intervene. Initially, the council said and did little to nothing. When the council finally got involved, it sided with the administration’s firing. The citizens stood up and with the help of Representative Davey Hiott, they got the administration/ council to back off and work out a deal. Now the volunteers, a board of local citizens and the re-hired director are running the mill.

Sadly, not every employee treated unfairly by the administration and left to dangle by the council will have the community come to their aid and a state representative step in to sort things out. I thought, what recourse do they have?

If an employee is treated unfairly by management, he/she is to first go to their department head or the county administrator, and try and work it out. If that is not possible, the employee takes it to a grievance committee made up of county employees who are appointed by the county council. The committee hears both sides and makes a ruling. This ruling is then handed over to the county administrator. If the administrator approves of the ruling, that decision is final. If the administrator disagrees, he can discard the rule and make his own decision, and that is final. This process has a couple of flaws, rooted in a lack of objectivity.

One, likely the employee grievance will be with the county administration (e.g., an unfair demotion or firing of the employee by the department head or the county administrator). The employees on the committee are paid, evaluated, and beholden to their bosses — department heads or the county administrator. The committee has a built in bias to rule against the employee and for the administration.

Two, regardless of the committee ruling the county administrator has the final say, an individual who often is directly involved in the situation. I know it will not be easy, but the council and administration must work to change the law and policy to improve this process.

One, the grievance committee must be independent. The committee should be made up of retired county employees. This way they’ll have no direct ties to the department heads and county administrator, yet have a working knowledge of county operations.

Two, the committee’s decision should be final. The county administrator, who might very well have been involved in the dispute, should not be able to discard or reverse the decision of the committee. Finally, it was also disturbing to hear the administration regularly tells employees never to speak to their councilmen. By all means the administration runs the departments and makes the day to day decisions, but councilmen have the right to listen to all citizens including employees. These same employees are also electors of this county and have a right to talk to their elected councilmen.

If you are a councilman and are approached by an employee complaining about his job, you listen, maybe give advice and direct him back to his manager. If he is complaining about the overall budget or tax policy, you listen and take notes. If the employees informs the councilmen something unethical or corrupt is going on, you listen and report it. The operative word there is “listen”. Councilmen should always be open to, and listen to employees.

Finally, I think it would be a good idea for a couple of councilman, along with the new administrator to go out to each department. Say this is our direction, ours is an open door policy, and what questions do you have?