Meet and Confer Questions....

[Loribabble]

Hi,

Let me just start by saying that our union rep is awesome - just would like to see if anyone else has any input for us since I am so new to all this union biz.

Kind of a long story, but our administrator is a non-licensed person overseeing nurses in what has been determined at the state and federal level to be a nurse driven program. Previous admin have also been non-licensed but understood the purpose of the program and supported the nurses.

To put it mildly, the nurses (and many others) have been at war for the last year with this administrator over her poor leadership and neglect of duty.

She has been exposed and we have the support of her supervisor and the administration above her, our human resources, etc. Unfortunately, in our county, firing or demotion is next to impossible to happen... but, there is a MAJOR re-org planned for our department that would remove her from overseeing the licensed (75% of the department) and be relegated to only supervising 8 clerks.

We have a meet and confer about the re-org planned in 2 weeks.... 90% of the department is 100% behind the re-org and super thrilled with it. Our administrator is kicking and screaming, refusing to acknowledge any culpability; trying to get our rep fired because she can't attack the nurses anymore.... etc.

The 2 main players, the nurses and our administrator are in the same union but have different reps (it's been interesting.... ).

I know our rep with help with preparing us, etc... just wondered if anyone else had any thoughts on what we can expect etc...

Thanks!

[TriciaJ, RN]

Is this a county workplace (or some other government entity) vs a private business? Does your administrator have an employment contract? Does she have a job description?

I would expect her to wave around her contract which probably gives her some protection from demotion or dismissal. You should counter with her job description to show how she has been falling short of providing the leadership you need.

You might request a new job description be developed if the previous one doesn't adequately address the needs of the staff. The current administrator can be given the opportunity to compete for the new position or it can be filled by someone more qualified.

Hope this helps.