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Business Systems Improvement Project |
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City Plans To Lay Off Finance IT Workers, Operations Staff Told To
Find Other Work In the latest wave of proposed budget cuts, three IT workers in the City Finance department are slated for layoff, once the SAP system goes live in 2004. In the TPU Computer Operations group, City managers are telling their employees to seek job opportunities elsewhere in the City, and to get alternative IT training. Let's not forget the promises Phil Knudsen made to the City Council and the Union back in March of 2000, when it was feared that BSIP would result in layoffs & contracting out of Bargaining Unit work:
Council Member McGavick: "...Are there
any employees being displaced by this contract"? Knudsen: "Our goal is to have happy and productive employees, and if they want to negotiate the impacts, we will do so." We intend to hold him to his promises, and negotiate the impacts. BSIP Project Kicks Off - 13 New Members Hired! New Union Members who have signed up this month include: Jayne McCartney, Purchasing Analyst with Purchasing; David Nelson, ADSA with Customer Service; Vladimir Schwab, CST with Central IS; Dale Stubbart, ADSA with Customer Service; Debra Sims, CSA with General Services Fleet; Nina Oliver-Jones, ADSA with General Services; William O'Neil, CST with T&D Planning, Paul Vincent, CST with Public Works; John Hargis ADSA with the BSIP; and welcome back to Paul Federighi, Principal Tech CSP of BSIP, who has recently returned from working at AT&T Wireless, to lead the SAP BASIS Team. SAP Training Complete, On to Configuration! BSIP Project Kicked Off July 15th
The BSIP formally kicked off the project on July 15th, with a team building exercise at the Point Defiance Zoo, followed by a multi-cultural event at the Tacoma Dome, involving tribal dancers from New Zealand, home of TUI's CEO, Ballu Khan.
The project team members will attend a four week training course in SAP software, and then move to the official project headquarters at the Carlton Center, at 15th & Broadway. Joint Labor Signs BSIP Staffing AgreementPierce County Joint Labor recently signed a Letter of
Agreement with the City, governing project staffing for the Business
Systems Improvement Project. Local 120 representatives John Ohlson,
Celeste Suliin Burris and Staff Rep. Brock Logan met with City HR Director
Phil Knudsen to work out final details of the agreement in early July. The
agreement spells out hiring procedures for project employees, identifies
how vacant positions will be backfilled during the project, overtime
expectations, hours of work, earning incentive days, and provisions for
returning to previous jobs once the project is complete. In addition, the
City has agreed to voluntarily recognize any new positions created as a
result of the project as Union represented, with the exception of
supervisory or confidential positions. TUI Consulting & SAP Named As BSIP Vendors6/14/02 BSIP Historical Timeline4/27/02 Either TUI proposing SAP software, or IBM who will be proposing an integrated set of Best Of Breed systems: PeopleSoft Financials, Maximo Work Management, and SPL CIS; will emerge as the winner of the final contract. Once the vendor selection has been made, contract negotiations will be finalized, and the implementation will get under way. Project employees will be named, teams formed for each of the four modules: FMAS, CIS, WMS, and HRMS. The BSIP project office is being established at 15th & Broadway in the Sound Credit Union building. Actual implementation is expected to begin between August & September 2002. Mobile Workforce Management Other functions it performs include crew scheduling, timesheet entry, appointment calendar, automated dispatching and routing. CSC Backs Out, Orcom Dropped; IBM & TUI Are Finalists1/1/02 After the finalists were notified they had passed the demos and site visits, CSC (Computer Sciences Corp.) decided to withdraw their participation in the selection process. This leaves two 'solutions' on the table, involving TUI proposing SAP software, and IBM who will be proposing an integrated set of Best Of Breed systems: PeopleSoft Financials, Maximo Work Management, and SPL or Orcom CIS. In February, the vendors visited us to interview our Subject Matter Experts, and gained further insight of our business needs and processes. After the vendor visits, the ELT voted to drop outsourcer Orcom from the field of finalists. In other developments, the ELT voted to replace the existing Fleet Management system, include a GIS interface, and include Mobile Dispatching in the scope of the project. The ELT is scheduled to receive final inputs from the BSIP Core Team and Subject Matter Experts, and will make the final selection in early May. Following the final selection, will be a "Fit Gap Analysis" period, where we will install software from the "apparently successful" vendor, and determine whether it is really a good fit or not. After the Fit Gap Analysis, contract negotiations commence for the actual implementation, and project kickoff takes place; expected to be sometime in summer 2002. Except from TPU Newsline; 3/28/00 This project builds on work done previously by the CIS and FMAS systems replacement projects and will require extensive involvement by many City staff. Between now and year-end, the team will analyze system needs, request proposals and evaluate vendor proposals. For more information, contact project manager Joan Waldrop, ext. 8948, or a member of the executive team: Jake Fey, Energy Services; Linda McCrea, Water Distribution; Bill Schatz, Customer Services; Michelle Lewis-Hodges, Information Systems; Steve Marcotte, Finance; Karen Larkin, Public Works; Phillip Knudsen, Human Resources; or Sandi Holdener, Public Works. Management Agrees to Consider Local 120's Concerns We met with members of the Executive Team on Friday, March 24, 2000, and presented a list of bargaining unit concerns, voiced by the membership at the March unit meeting. While management argued that the PTI contract was not entirely our work, they did agree to provide us with a letter stating that parts of the PTI contract were indeed ADSA work, and also agreed to consider our list of concerns. Here is the list of our issues: * Recognition by City management that the PTI contract involves bargaining unit work in phase one of their work plan. Phase one involves 1821 hours of consultant work that is comprised of the duties of the Application Systems Analyst position (CSC 0135). This issue may be resolved upon receipt of the 30-day letter of intent to subcontract. * No Local 120 members shall be displaced as a result of the contracted work. * Local 120 members assigned to work on the project shall have their current positions backfilled for the duration of their assignment to the project. * Local 120 members should be actively involved in the technical decision making aspects of the project. We request Union representation on the Executive Steering Committee, in the requirements sessions, and in the software procurement and deployment activities. * The option of doing the system in-house should be considered as an alternative to contracting out the work. * The in house solution should be included in the cost benefit analysis performed on the RFP responses. * Look at the long-term costs of maintaining a vendor solution vs. an in house solution, including per-seat licensing and modification maintenance costs. * Computer systems that are purchased and deployed by non-technical staff typically struggle and are not as successful as they could be. Examples of past projects: Reality, SDC phone system, CIS Call center load leveling and Tidemark. * Current City IT Staff should be allowed to submit a response to the RFP. * Explore alternatives to purchasing a turn-key system; i.e.: modular code, assembled by City IT Staff. * Offer training to current City IT Staff on new vendor products purchased. Business Systems Improvement Project Grievance The City held a meeting with City employees and the project consultants from PTI on Thursday, March 23rd, 2000 at the Sewer Treatment Plant Conference room. The purpose of this meeting was for PTI to present an overview of the BSI project to City employees. Click Here to read the Legal Opinion to Ray Corpuz and the Council in response to our grievance, and how management "has confirmed that the current staff's expertise is not comprehensive enough to encompass a project of this size and complexity." Also note that the memo incorrectly describes how "A Local 120 representative has been working ...on the team developing the project and determining an appropriate consultant." This bargaining unit member is not a designated "representative" nor were Local 120 officers consulted in this matter. As some of you may be aware, Local 120 had filed a grievance on the intent to subcontract bargaining unit work on the new Business Systems Improvement Project (BSIP), also known as the CIS/ARMS replacement project. This project is aimed at replacing the entire City's information systems, CIS, ARMS, HRMS, Purchasing & Stores, Work Management and many other smaller subsystems. The City is looking for an "Enterprise Resource Management" solution, from a vendor that can provide all of these things in a single product. The main reason for
filing this grievance is to If we don't grieve
this now, We are not attempting to impede or delay the BSIP project, nor are we against the replacement of the City's existing data systems. Per Article 16 of our contract, Management is required to notify us in writing 30 days prior to the implementation of any bargaining unit work that is contracted out, and bargain the impacts of this contracting/subcontracting to our members. The basis of our grievance is to contest the fact that we were not given the 30 days notice prior to the implementation of the agreement with Pacific Technologies Inc. (PTI) to provide systems analysis and consulting work for the Business Systems Improvement project, and they had not initiated impact bargaining with us. Management maintains that systems analysis is not our work. The City Council authorized the agreement with PTI at the March 7, 2000 Council meeting, even though we testified against it's passage prior to the commencement of impact bargaining. Phillip Knudson, Human Resources Director, personally assured me and the City Council that Local 120 members would not lose their jobs as a result of the BSIP project. This coming after he stated in a letter to Dennis Bolton that this is NOT bargaining unit work. We intend to hold him to his promise. We thank Councilman Dave DeForrest for advocating our position, and voting against the ordinance. Celeste went through the PTI agreement and found 15 instances where the consultant's tasks matched 'essential duties' from the ADSA job description. Why we are grieving it? A local 120 member from the Pierce County Health Dept. lost his grievance against a reduction in his work hours because we didn't complain when his tasks were re-assigned to other non-union workers. Now, he is subjected to a 21 hour part time work week, and is forced to pay his own medical premiums in addition to a reduced paycheck! Update 9/1/01: This member finally had to seek employment elsewhere with the State Health Dept., as his old full time position was never restored. This website is a Union Made Product
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