Focus on time-keeping attacks professionalism
Watch our work, not the clock
By ROGER E. BENSON
Six months after the conclusion of negotiations on the PS&T contract, PEF is still hammering out contract issues with the state.
Among these issues are such items as joint-committee funding, stand-by/on-call pay, and time-keeping.
At this time, the most onerous issue related to the contract is the state’s attempt to implement non-negotiated changes in time-keeping.
The state’s unilateral changes to time and attendance reporting for our members contradicts 30 years of contract language interpretation, history and practice, and is an attempt to achieve through edict what they could not and did not achieve through negotiations.
PEF will fight, using all means at our disposal, this attempt by the state to implement “minute-in-minute-out” time-keeping that we did not agree to in negotiations.
Aside from the contract issues surrounding the state’s attempts to implement such reporting for our overtime-ineligible members, what the state is attempting to implement is bad management and it is insulting.
At its best, it represents a backward and archaic management practice that shifts management from being result-oriented to clock-watching.
At its worst, it reflects a demoralizing and insulting assumption that employees cannot be trusted to do their jobs. It’s a practice that enlightened employers abandoned long ago.
The message the state is sending its professional employees is: “I no longer trust you to work the hours you are assigned.”
It doesn’t matter if you work extra hours to do your job, all that matters is that you are at work exactly at your scheduled time and depart exactly at your scheduled time.
This archaic management style only further undermines the professionalism of the state workforce and creates hourly, instead of motivated and empowered workers.
The state is continually seeking innovative ways to increase efficiency and productivity, the governor even made mention of this in his State of the State address.
One way to do this is to treat New York’s professional public employees as professionals and allow them to focus on doing their jobs, rather than doing their time sheets.