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Inside The Fishbowl
Official Newsletter of NTEU 280
August 2007 Volume
22 - Number 14
PRESIDENT Bill
Evans (202)566-2789
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT
Dwight Welch (202)566-2787
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT Diane
Lynne (202)566-2786
CHIEF STEWARD Rosezella Canty-Letsome (202)566-2784
J. William Hirzy, Ph.D.
(202)566-2788
Anne-Marie Pastorkovich (202)343-9623
Diane Rains (410)305-2908
Freshteh Toghrol, Ph.D. (410)305-2755
SECRETARY Jeff
Beaubier, Ph.D. (202)564-7642
TREASURER Dr.
Bernard Schneider
(703)305-5555
EDITOR Diane
Lynne (202)566-2786
MAIN UNION NUMBER
(202) 566-2785
UNION FAX NUMBER
(202) 566-1460
NTEU Chapter 280 Website: www.nteu280.org
NTEU National Website: www.nteu.org
Link to NTEU Membership Form: https://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf1187.pdf
Table
of Contents
*1. Strengthening EPA: How OA Implementation Overlooks Bad Bosses
*2.
The Bad Boss Issue – Contest Winners of the Worst Boss Scenarios
*3.
Dwight Welch’s Column: X-Bytes: Bike Locker Fiasco
_____________________________________________________________
*1. Stronger EPA Initiatives Ignore
Mechanisms to Make Bad Bosses Accountable, Ignoring NTEU Requests for Mandatory
360 Reviews with Teeth
A Note from NTEU Chapter 280 President
Bill Evans:
The following memorandum has been widely
circulated to managers across the agency.
While it may open up some new opportunities for a few of us, the
down-side is that there will be less personnel to do the actual work, a serious
issue in these budget stressed times.
This memo, in changing staff to management ratios, grants more time for
managers to scrutinize and micro manage your work. In many Offices, the staff to management ratio
was at this “new level” of one manager to eight workers anyway, so why the rush
to send out a memo with this “new” ratio?
Although NTEU Chapt.
280 has argued repeatedly that EPA can only be as good as it’s leadership,
there is no talk of allowing the staff to evaluate managers' performance (360
evaluations) and hold them accountable for anything. Bad boss? Suck it
up, because no one in upper management wants to know about it. No one wants to
fix the problems. I think I finally get it.
A stronger EPA means a stronger management with more, not less SESers, and keeping grade 14 employees out of the running
for SES training programs.
At NTEU Chapt. 280’s Lunch and Learn about this initiative this summer, AA for
OARM, Luis Luna, advised us that participation is open to everyone at some
level in the development of suggestions for “A Stronger EPA”. However,
increasing the size of the SES pool makes me think that a hand-picked group of
people are developing these recommendations that are then heading right into
implementation.
At least, we want to know who developed
these “suggestions” being implemented below. We ask Mr. Luna to provide us with
the names, AAship, grade and managerial status of the
people who made these recommendations, and we will print it in The Fishbowl
so you can see who is shaping your future at EPA.
The Executive Board of NTEU welcomes your
view point.
JUL 10 2007
THE ADMINISTRATOR
MEMORANDUM
SUBJECT: A Stronger EPA: Two Key Initiatives
TO: Assistant Administrators
General Counsel
Inspector General
Chief Financial Officer
Chief of Staff
Associate Administrators
Regional Administrators
As you know, I have made "A Stronger EPA" one of my four
core priorities. The
Agency has a challenging
mission and demanding responsibilities, and it is critically important that the
people doing its work have the tools, support, and work environment they need
to best serve the American people. I am committed to providing our staff with
the tools and resources that foster excellence.
A workgroup headed by Wayne Nastri, Luis
Luna, and George Gray, with input from abroad cross-section of EPA staff, has
developed a plan that offers short- and long-term initiatives to help realize
the "Stronger EPA" vision
(see
http://intranet.epa.gov/ohr/a_stronger
e pa/index.htm).
I am pleased to announce implementation of two of the plan's
recommendations. I am accepting the recommendation to revisit the existing
supervisory ratio of 1 :11 . Clearly, effective
management of EPA's human resources depends on a strong network of first-line
supervisors working with staff to achieve results. The 11 :1
ratio, however, does not always afford supervisors and managers sufficient time
to focus on important areas like leadership, communicating performance
expectations, and providing effective performance feedback. Many federal
agencies now employ a 1 :8 ratio, and a lower ratio
may be appropriate for parts of EPA as well.
The Office of Administration and Resources Management will be
developing specific guidance on this issue. I ask that you give this effort
your personal attention and review your organization's needs with specific
focus on effective first-line supervision as a key element of your management
structure.
Second, EPA's management team must be led by highly effective
executive-level
employees who can capitalize on
the creativity and commitment of the Agency's workforce. To that end, the
Executive Resources Board is working closely with the Office of Personnel
Management to launch a Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program
in Fiscal Year 2007/2008 that will be open to GS-15s. The specifics of the CDP,
including application procedures and timeframes, will be announced shortly.
As we progress with our "Stronger EPA" planning, I will
continue to share information with you about new initiatives in the areas of
management and executive development, mid-level staff development, and
continued professional growth opportunities for all EPA staff.
I appreciate your support in advancing efforts to create a
stronger EPA. If you have any questions about these initiatives, please contact
Susan Hazen, Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Office of
Administration and Resources Management, at (202) 564-4600 or Michael Hamlin at
(202) 564-7779.
*2. The Bad Boss
Issue – Contest Winners of the Worst Boss Scenarios.
Thank you “Working America” for allowing
us to reprint the winners, runners up, and notables from your Bad Boss Contest.
Working
http://www.workingamerica.org/badboss/
We encourage you to visit the site and
scan all 650 entries and the reader responses. You may read these and think how
lucky that you’ve never experienced some of these bad boss antics,
or you may be saying that your boss at EPA did even worse things to you.
The winners were declared such by visitors
to the website who voted on the stories.
(A long
recitation of cases that appeared in the original of the issue of Inside the
Fishbowl was deleted. You may access these cases at the workingamerica
website cited above.)
Another Union Website you may find
interesting is http://www.biglabor.com Union Communication Services.
Union Communication Services Inc., sponsor
of this site, has been publishing and distributing education, training and
communication materials for unions across
*3. Dwight Welch’s column: X-Bytes: Bike
Locker Fiasco
X-Bytes
by
Dwight
Welch
Executive
Vice President
Dwight Welch’s column, X-Bytes, is an
editorial column. The views expressed in
the column are Mr. Welch’s alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of
the Editor or the Executive Board.
Dangerous and Bike Unfriendly Design,
Hostile Security Guards, Discourage Potomac Yard Bike Commuters - EPA
Management/Arlington County Apparently Impotent to Make Necessary Changes
As a college student in my first course on
Environmental Studies I learned that the most energy efficient machine known to
mankind, either biological or man-made, is a human on a bicycle. Perhaps this is an urban myth, but in any
event bicyclists are not creating the pollution or greenhouse gasses that other
forms of transportation do. So one would think that the EPA, the U.S. Agency created to save
the environment, would be encouraging and making it easier to commute to work
by bike. Even though the EPA has
spent more time looking after the bikers’ needs than most agencies, there is
still more that can be done. Read on.
In recent weeks I have been receiving
numerous complaints, most of them involving stories of hostile guards and of
the unsafe and biker unfriendly bike facilities at Potomac Yards (PY). While the e-mail to all PY employees from
Facilities Management claims that interested parties were involved in the
planning, the Unions certainly weren’t and I’ve filed a grievance in that
regard, but the bicyclists also claim their input has been ignored. I decided to investigate the situation
personally. I was escorted by the PY
Bike Coordinator Quentin Borges-Silva.
The alleged “state of the art” bike
facilities are to bikers what the Edsel was to auto
buyers and just about as well received.
In addition to about a half dozen outdoor, public, sin wave style bike
racks in front of the building, there were three areas within the parking
garage. The main facility, including
showers and a locker room are in the
Aside from the cramped and inconvenient
facilities which I will get into later, the major problem is that bikers are
being prevented from using the auto entrance, but instead being subjected to
significant additional risk, using the bike entrance. That’s right, the
bike entrances present a significant increased hazard. Enforcing the use of the bike doors are
brown-shirt-style security guards working for the landlord. Indeed, in the time I was there, we were hassled three times, once each at the three garage
locations, by guards. At these
interceptions I presented myself as an EPA employee interested in bicycle
commuting, being shown the facilities by the PY Bike Coordinator. At BP South, we were stopped, but only asked
to display our badges. That’s cool. At BP Central we were stopped and detained
for 10-15 minutes. After some lengthy
communications over the radio, they took our names and badge numbers. Seems we were in violation because we looked
out at the driveway which led to BP Central but which was not permitted to be
used by either bikers or pedestrians.
During our involuntary detention, I got to chatting with the guard who
ultimately told me he wasn’t a meanie, but rather he
was doing this because he “vas under orders.”
At our third stop, BP North, we were again approached by a security
guard. When we informed him that the
bike door wasn’t working, he immediately lightened up. Getting into a bit of conversation, we found
out that his previous career was in Industrial Safety and he thought the new
policy “just didn’t make any sense” from a safety standpoint. (I hope his honesty will not get him in
trouble.)
Before I get into why the new policy and
current setup are so dangerous, let me tell you a bit about the
facilities. The showers and locker room
were at BP South. We went into the men’s
side. BP South is supposed to handle 50
bikers. The 50 lockers are kiddie daycare sized, in a very claustrophobic room, but
the real indignity is the single bench in the middle. Large enough for only one man to sit down and
change his clothes. One of the showers
and the toilet was
The bike lockups in BP North and Central
were sin wave pipes, but at the main facility BP South where the lockers and
showers are, you must lift your bike off the ground and hang it up. A bit of a problem if you
have back problems and/or not much upper body strength. It supposedly holds 50 bikes, but only if
everyone hangs them in a consistent manner.
The security lock on the cage was broken at the time I visited, so
anyone could just walk right in and steal your bike.
But the big issue is safety, more
precisely, the lack of it. The new
policy, imposed by the landlord, backed up by the brown shirts, and cow-towed
to by GSA and EPA management introduces significant increased risk to bike
commuters. There are two ways to access
the garage. One is if you are riding
with traffic, the other is if you come down the sidewalk. Under the old (preferred by the bikers) way,
coming in from the street, one could pedal along with traffic, take an
immediate right after entering the garage, right into the bike cage. Under the new policy (imposed by the
landlord), one must first cut across both incoming and outgoing lanes of
traffic, dismount, enter the bike door, if it works, and then again cut across
incoming and outgoing lanes of traffic.
And might I add, this second crossing of two lanes of traffic is where
there is a blind spot. Considerable
amounts of car paint on the leading post of the bike cage entrance rail attests
to automobiles not doing too well at that right turn.
Coming down the sidewalk, which in many
jurisdictions (I don’t know about
BP Central as mentioned above is
realistically inaccessible. If you can
no longer get to it, I guess there is no increased danger, just wasted space.
At BP North, one must travel down a long,
narrow, twisting turning sidewalk. (Hey
better jump fast pedestrians, there’s no room for you and a bike too.) Then you wind up bumpity,
bumping down a flag stone style walk, UP A CURB, and then dismount to open the
bike door which didn’t work when we were there.
Again, you had to cross incoming and outgoing traffic instead of, as
bikers used to do, take an immediate right just inside the door.
The landlord is apparently listening to
his lawyers. Instead he should consider
listening to the bicyclists, safety experts, the City of
At the end of my “tour” I remarked to my
fearless guide of the PY netherworld, that I thought it a bit irregular that we
were stopped 3 times and detained for 10-15 minutes. He told me that I got off light. While escorting a building inspector from
The PY Bike Coordinator is hoping that
Early on I mentioned they took my name and
badge number. Numerous cyclists go
through these problems on a daily basis, and as a result of this jackboot
policy, one employee has had to file a grievance in order to protect
himself. It appears that there has been
a gross violation of his legal rights under 5 USC, not to mention his civil
rights. A separate grievance has been filed because EPA management unilaterally
changed the access for cyclists to the Potomac Yard garage without notifying
the Unions. At this writing, it is our
understanding that facility management is in the process of setting up a
meeting between the cyclists, the Landlord, GSA and EPA facilities
management. We will, of course, let you
know the outcome.