Monday, September 29, 2014
"A Hard Pill to Swallow"
I suppose that in itself, it's not a particularly good or useful idea to harp on the "sanitation" issue any more. "What's done is done," one of our neighbors said to me at the time, although that appears not to have been the case, even for the person who said it. "Moving forward...," as others say.
One opportunity, at least for me, is to ignore the continued sputterings, and to assume they will die out in time. Which perhaps they will. But ignoring significant psychological and emotional dynamics is not what I do, especially when they have practical and functional consequences.
In the aftermath of the goodbye-lunch-for-the-departing-employees stunt, one reader wrote several comments to me, and she began by noting what I have used as the title for this post.
Here's the pill that's hard to swallow:
This whole sanitation crusade was structured as a complaint about lack of appreciation for Village employees who are portrayed as valued. They were further portrayed as having been summarily and heartlessly dismissed, with no acknowledgement or recognition of the important role they filled in the Village. It was said that in our transitioning to WastePro, we pulled the rug out from under these people, depriving them of their careers and their livelihoods, and we were uniquely cruel to have treated them this way. That's the assertion. That's the portrayal. That's the image and the mascot.
These are the competing realities. Although no one deprived these Village employees of anything, we have, in fact, done exactly that to other Village employees. There was a woman who provided janitorial service for Village Hall and the recreation center. We dismissed her. One day she had a job, and the next day, she didn't. We decided to reassign the tasks and save the money. There was a PW worker named Charles. We decided his job description, or the way he fulfilled it, was not worth the money, and we ended his employment here. We did not replace him. We "retired" a PW worker named Roscoe. We also "retired" Bernard Pratt. It was the same deal for these three men as it was for the woman who used to clean the log cabin and the rec center: a job one day, no job the next day. If you want to know how many Village residents rose up to complain about our treatment of these valued employees, abruptly deprived of livelihoods, the answer is none. There has also never been a general outcry in opposition to the low wages we have always paid these people.
And the fact is, we didn't deprive our sanitation workers. We carefully chose an outsource contractor who agreed to hire all of our employees, and pay them better than we did. And this was to do exactly the same work they were already doing, and in part, in exactly the same place, with better equipment to use. We provided for these Village employees extremely well, especially compared to how we dealt, without criticism, with other similar Village employees.
Bernard Pratt, by the way, moved back to Georgia to be with other parts of his family. When his mother died a few years ago, several of us, but not most of the current complainers, went to the funeral. (It seems Bernard didn't feel like "family," or a "close friend," to those of us who couldn't be bothered to attend his mother's funeral.) Charles is still around. He does lawn maintenance, and a number of his customers are Village residents. I don't know what the cleaning woman and Roscoe are doing. These are Village employees to whom the dreaded eventuality actually happened, and no one made a peep about it. What happened to the appreciation of, and concern for, our valued PW employees?
And what about some of our other valued Village employees? We have improved services by hiring new people. One is a replacement, of sorts, for Candido Sosa-Cruz, and the others are recreation employees. They have been routinely slighted by those here who complain of the disrespectful treatment of Village employees. Their legitimacy, and the legitimacy of their positions, have been questioned, often to their faces. The disrespect has not been lost on them. It is they who have been having a bit of trouble swallowing the pill.
Here they are, having applied for and accepted an opportunity to fulfill a position, ready to do and give their best, and bringing a great attitude every day. In return, they are treated as unwelcome intruders by BP residents. And these are the very same residents who then bemoan what they portray as the disrespectful treatment of Village employees. If you had just taken a job in BP, would that be a hard pill for you to swallow?
What's done is in fact done, and there's no reason at all not to assume it is an improvement. We should without question be moving forward. And we can have every confidence the sanitation workers who didn't want to work for WastePro will be moving forward. If they didn't have a better deal, they would have accepted the generous offer to work for WastePro.
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Today, I received a call from a reader who wanted to inform me, but only confidentially, that I got it all wrong. The cleaning woman was fired for cause (although curiously not replaced by someone better), Charles was lovingly encouraged to resign for the sake of his health (although he was also never seen doing anything other than riding around the Village in a gator, and his health problems apparently don't prevent him from continuing to work actively, Roscoe retired on his own, having worked for a long time for us (and neither he nor Charles was replaced), and Bernard wanted to retire, so he could move back to Georgia. None of this is consistent with what I know from a variety of other sources, and I am left wondering why the caller wouldn't himself simply post a comment, as I repeatedly asked him to do, taking the delicious liberty to tell me how wrong I am. But, there it is.
ReplyDeleteFred
I also tried to point to the caller, who wasn't interested, that the reasons for these personnel reductions was not my point. The caller himself told me that very few insiders knew the real reasons for the reductions. So my point was that what almost all of us knew was simply that the reductions occurred, and no reasons were given. BUT NO ONE COMPLAINED! No one rose up in protest, demanding to know why these cruelties happened. No one, we have to conclude, cared. And these past Village employees are essentially identical to the sanitation workers who were not interested in working for WastePro.
DeleteSo knowing that no one cared then, and so many of us apparently don't care about the feelings or welfare of our newest employees, we are still left to wonder what all the drama is really about regarding the outsourcing of sanitation. We have not been told the real reasons for the protest, so we don't know what they are. All we know is that they are not what is presented.
Fred
My error. We did not improve services by hiring new people. We simply replaced prior employees who left. We replaced Candido Sosa-Cruz with Krishan Manners, and we replaced Issa Thornell with Shelicia Bartley. We replaced two part time recreation people, David Filsaime and Steve Graham, with one full time person, Wills Celestin. So the net FTE is the same or about the same.
ReplyDeleteFred
The "real" sendoff occurred on Tuesday, September 30. A number of us were there, although only one of the four sanitation employees who did not accept the WastePro offer was there. The one who was there was Jean. I asked him what he would be doing from now on, and he said he didn't yet know. He had "four" options, although he did not specify what they are. I asked why he didn't want to work with WastePro, and he cited the distance to get there and back every day. (It's 22 miles each way from here.) I asked if he had a car, and he said he does. He just didn't want to go that far to report for work and come back home. That seemed reasonable, especially since he has four other ready options.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea why Alphonse, Ron, and Tim were not there. I heard some story about Tim, and how he wasn't well enough to come in anyway. I gather he misses a lot of work here, due to physical complaints. Alphonse and Ron were working on Tuesday, but they left early, and thereby missed or avoided the end-of-day sendoff. Apparently, there was also a lot of yard trash that didn't get picked up on Tuesday, either, so maybe they missed more than the sendoff.
Fred
Well, the yard pickup was missed yesterday- not the best note to end things on. However, WastePro is here now picking up after them. Their truck looks brand new.
ReplyDeleteMilt,
DeleteI have a strong feeling some BP residents will be keeping score. Just two days ago, one resident wrote in to allege that the new recycling bins had been strewn carelessly around, and were pitched into yards and even into the street, with debris of their own left about. There is no clear indication that this is true, but one of our neighbors wanted to be on record about registering a complaint. Others will be looking for any possible or imagined lapse they can find in WastePro's service. (The fact is, our neighbor's supposed observation was intended to demonstrate how sloppy our new service is, even before it began. But Heidi Shafran's closer inspection suggested that what was strewn about was not the new recycling bins but the regular garbage cans, left there by our crew.)
What you noticed from yesterday's (non) pick-up is not isolated. If we can try to explain to ourselves why sanitation workers didn't complete the route yesterday, it's less clear why this has happened from time to time. I happen to live on an alley, and it's not unusual that after I have a done a larger than usual clean-up, it may take a couple of weeks for the crew to pick it up. Because I'm on the alley, and the pile is not in my way, I have never made an issue of it, but it definitely does happen.
So whoever is keeping score can add this kind of thing to the tally.
Fred
"closer inspection suggested that what was strewn about was not the new recycling bins but the regular garbage cans, left there by our crew."
ReplyDeleteThat's a pathetic attempt. Some should "get their story straight" if they want to be perceived as creditable.
Another part of the complaint was that included in the debris was cardboard, which the person complaining assumed was some sort of insert or packaging from the new bins. In fact, no packaging or cardboard inserts were part of the new bins, and a refined interpretation is that any cardboard or other such debris was undoubtedly blown around from a neighbor's garbage.
DeleteWhich leads to a reminder: cardboard is recyclable! Don't throw it in the garbage, unless it has food adhered to it, like from a pizza box.
Fred
Well, it then sounds like a pretty hollow complaint. Or as you mention, "A Hard Pill to Swallow" for this resident. I trust these corrected facts were included in their complaint for the record.
Delete