Second in a series
Re “Who Was the Winner? Was There a Winner? Is It Important?”
As leader of the redheaded stepchild of labor unions, the executive branch of this otherwise monogamous tree, the compact Culver City Management Group, Glenn Heald was asked a leading question:
Fresh off a landmark labor agreement with City Hall, albeit not entirely in positive ways, does he feel obligated to approach officers of the other five unions to convince them of the correctness of Management’s path?
“No, I don’t,” he said directly.
“We do, though, speak to them on different levels. For example, I speak to Desmond Burns (President of the Culver City Employees Assn., the largest union) regularly, at least every week.
“We don’t necessarily talk specifics, certainly not negotiating points, which are confidential. But philosophies, approaches, understandings, we speak all the time about those things.
“But the reason we would not have an obligation is they don’t sign up to us. They sign up to the city.”
A management analyst in redevelopment, Mr. Heald says he is the public’s representative in evaluating new projects alongside planners and engineers, assessing the effect on the community and on budgeting.
“I am the guy in the room who doesn’t know anything about it,” he says with a chuckle. “Everybody else at least has expertise. You sit and listen to presentations, try to make sense, and you try to find the flaws that are going to come up because they need to be addressed anyway. You also should find the advantages or benefits that the others might not notice because their expertise or training is to look at a project from one angle.”
Taking Responsibility
Returning to an earlier question, Mr. Heald said:
“If you asked me, do we as management feel obligated to lead by example, I would say ‘absolutely.’”
What does that mean?
“We can’t make anybody follow us. Whereas we don’t have an obligation to go over and say, ‘You should do what we do,’ we certainly hope they do. We hope they look at (our agreement) and say (approvingly), ‘Gee, they did it.’
“I speak only for myself, but I don’t know of anybody who will do something (in labor negotiations) just because we did it. But I would hope they would look at our agreement and say ‘there must be some credibility to it.’”
Ninety percent of the 58 managers in Mr. Heald’s union approved the contract some would see as problematic because of givebacks and shrinking benefits that the City Council endorsed last week.
The unique nature of his union requires an overwhelming vote, the president said.
“For us, a 51 to 49 percent split, a simple majority, would not work,” he said. “Even if it were legally or technically permissible, because unlike our friends in the CCEA, you can quantify their performances, say, if they punch the clock at 7:30 and punch out at 5:30.
How It Is Different for Us
“You can say, ‘This is fine because you are to cut seven park grounds a day. If you cut them correctly, then you have done your job correctly.’
“In management, it is very difficult to quantify our work. It has to be qualified. Morale and motivation are extremely important because it is difficult to look at someone who comes in and sits at a desk and decide the person is giving the performance you need or that you had hoped for.
“Having good morale allows you to get people to work an extra two, three hours they get no overtime for, or to come in on weekends, and take work home, to think a little bit harder and really get their teeth into the projects they are working on.
“Morale is everything.
“So while the city could have forced things on us more draconian than what we accepted, or we could have fought them tooth-and-nail on them, if we lost morale, we would see a greater reduction of productivity than what we were aiming for. If we could have something our group overwhelmingly accepted, not liked but accepted as being in the best interests of the city in a partnership with us, rather than being us vs. them, we could maintain our morale and we could expect productivity that is going to be affected even moreso now if staffing is trimmed even further, that becomes all important. That would be our imperative.
“Our goal was to get an agreement that furthered the goals of both the city and the Management Group together rather than separately.
“That,” said Mr. Heald, “is where it became important to have an overwhelming affirmative vote to know we had achieved that objective.”
(To be continued)
