DWP Reform — Modern Civil Service and Labor Relations
By Tony Wilkinson
Long journeys begin with a single step. The road to a 21st century workforce at LADWP could start with a public vote to free the utility from the Charter requirement that it use the city’s Civil Service system. Let’s say the citizen-owners of the utility do approve that exemption. The next day nothing would change. The second step would be for the utility to meet and confer with its labor partners on what might come next.
The two most important needs of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power are rates that give it sufficient access to capital and a workforce that can adapt quickly to the fast-changing utility business.
The challenge of achieving fast and flexible hiring and sustained management excellence depends on a constructive relationship between DWP and the unions that represent its workers. Civil Service is not the only issue. Work rules and the provisions of labor agreements are equally important.
Outside of DWP, there is often anger and frustration expressed with the Department’s dominant union, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 18. Part of this is because the Local has been very effective in obtaining high wages and benefits for its members. It can be arrogant over issues like financial disclosure for the safety and training institutes that it maintains jointly with the Department. Its many contributions to the political campaigns of city officials are seeds of controversy. Despite all this, it can be argued that IBEW Local 18 has a stronger interest in the long-term health and success of LADWP than elected officials. It is with this perspective that DWP management needs to work out a new hiring and promotion system with its unions.
This writer’s view is that abolishing Civil Service at DWP could be unwise, and is also unlikely.
Abolishing Civil Service could be unwise because the replacement might be a series of job categories and protections that were created and maintained under DWP’s labor agreements. This could limit the ability to manage the workforce just as much as Civil Service, only in different ways. It would insert labor’s representatives into an inappropriate management role at the Department.
Abolishing Civil Service at DWP is unlikely because of the prevailing sentiment of the city’s elected officials, key administrators, and the Coalition of LA City Unions. Although the DWP Reform proposals would give more power to the appointed Board, elected officials would retain some veto powers to exercise when a course correction seems needed. Total abolition of Civil Service would likely be the first veto exercised by the City Council. However, both the city and its workers recognize that there is some need to modernize the city’s own Civil Service system. LADWP could be the laboratory in which to test modernization.
In an earlier analysis (DWP Reform — A Better Hiring and Promotion System, May 6) we called the current Civil Service system 100 percent “inbred”. We wondered if it would allow DWP to adapt to fast-changing technology, to competition, and to the higher expectations of its customers.
Coming from private business, our experience has been that people who are brought in from outside an organization often help the whole organization to develop. They can bring current skills that they share with co-workers, improving the whole team. In management, they can bring new styles and techniques that are based on a track record of success. Just as in genetics, some variation in the gene pool helps the whole community to become more successful. Exempt workers who are a good fit and perform well can later enter the Civil Service system by scoring well on a test and getting transferred or promoted from it.
The current number of DWP positions that are exempt from Civil Service (under 20 for a workforce of nearly 9,000) is completely inadequate for the purposes of fast hiring, addition of current technology skills, or flexible and appropriate additions to management. If DWP creates its own version of Civil Service, it should be able to have its own pool of exempt positions. We suggest five percent of authorized positions. Most hires and promotions (19 of 20) would still come from Civil Service lists. This should substantially protect jobs, merit hiring and promotion from within, and still give management the flexibility to add needed technical skills and managers. Forty percent of DWP workers will be eligible to retire over the next five years. This is the perfect time to add some flexibility in employment.
Labor’s role also needs to change. Every time that David Goldstein of CBS News catches a DWP work crew in some abuse of time (attending strip clubs, taking one hour breakfasts at the start of a shift), this writer doesn’t blame the workers. Good work or bad, the most important influence is usually the front line supervisor. The ability to lead by example, insist on workplace safety, advocate for good work conditions, treat everyone fairly and equally, and build an effective team is the role of a good supervisor. At DWP both management and labor must agree on every supervisor. Whatever reason that brought on this rule (probably draconian, unfair supervisors), it has outlived its purpose. The CBS News reports are a sign of a workplace discipline system that is broken. Management, alone, needs the ability to fix it.
A modified Civil Service will still be a system designed to promote from within. In the days fifty years ago when private businesses also sought to develop their own workforce as a key asset, companies recognized the need to train their workers. This writer believes that DWP needs to do more in this area. DWP spends over $140 million each year on employee training. Recently the Ratepayer Advocate revealed that almost all of this expense is simply the salary of DWP workers while they are training other DWP workers. How, exactly, does this bring NEW skills into the workforce? If DWP has an uneven record for developing managers internally, is internal training alone the best road to sustained management excellence?
Today private businesses spend much less on internal training. Instead they go outside and hire the best available talent, trained somewhere else. If DWP is to maintain a modified Civil Service system that largely promotes from within, it needs to invest more in training and developing its workforce. Its labor partners need to accept the reality that job security, internal promotion and training support are to some extent tradeoffs to base salary demands. If the citizen-owners of the utility vote to remove the requirement to use the city’s Civil Service system, that vote will help DWP to make this point in contract negotiations with its unions.
DWP Reform is about empowering both the utility and its workers to thrive in a newly competitive world with high customer service expectations. This writer is confident that both the utility and its unions are thoughtful enough and nimble enough to seize this opportunity.
Please send your questions and comments to [email protected]. DWP Reform information will be posted regularly at http://empowerla.org/dwpmou. There is additional information at http://dwpreform.lacity.org.
Tony Wilkinson is the Chair of the Neighborhood Council – DWP MOU Oversight Committee. He will be contributing information on the DWP Reform process to the EmpowerLA newsletter each week.