TONE PRECKWINKLE PRESIDENT Cook County Board of Commissloners OWRD R BOYKIN rn Dietiet Demis Deer 2rd Ott STANLEY MOORE. DEBORAH SIMs EDWARD. MOODY fh Distt, Ten Dstt PETER N SLVESTRL 1oRh Dire th Dts JOHN A RITCHEY th Diet rece cosun IMOTHY 0, SCHNEIDER eth Ott SEAN M MORRISON BUREAU OF HUMAN RESOURCES VELISHA L. HADDOX BUREAU CHIEF 118 North Clark Street, Room #40 @ Chicago, linois 60502 @ (312) 603-2300 July 27, 2017 Via Electronic Mail Nicholas S. Scouffas General Counsel Cook County Sheriff's Office Richard J. Daley Center 50 W. Washington, Room 704 Chicago, 60602 Dear Mr. Scouffas, |lam in receipt of your letter dated July 10, 2017 that follows the discussion we had with members of the CCSO’s senior staff on June 21, 2017. In that conversation, your office expressed its ;ppointment with the deal Cook County reached with Teamsters. Your letter says the same. Both the conversation and letter were full of mischaracterizations and blame. Missing from both, however, were acceptance of responsibility and accountability on the part of the Sheriff's Office. In my letter dated, April 6, 2017, | advised you that you misunderstood many things about bargaining, | offered to meet with you to clarify your concerns. That meeting did not happen. | will take the opportunity now to address the concerns you raise in your letter. {As you should be aware, the County and the Sheriff's Office are joint employers. Your Office manages its operations and Cook County funds your operations. Your Office has a team of attorneys, including the Labor Counsel who is responsible for labor relations, contract interpretation, grievances, arbitrations and negotiations regarding contract language, some of which may have an economic impact. To the extent the language has an economic impact, you are obligated to involve the County ‘who controls the economic negotiations. ‘The County's responsibility in bargaining is much broader than as it relates to your Office alone. The County’s team is responsible for bargaining County-wide the economic package which includes salary increases, healthcare and any proposals having an economic impact. Itis in our best interest to work together to accomplish our mutual goals. While the County's labor team works with you in bargaining, the representatives your Office sends to the bargaining table to negotiate on behalf of the Sheriff's Office are responsible for drafting and submitting proposals that address your Office’s concerns. That isnot the County’s responsibility. Your Office’s bargaining team included the General Counsel, Labor Counsel, Chief of Staff (DOC), DOC Bureau Chief and outside counsel. Given your Office's relationship with the Teamsters, however, your failure to reach an agreement with Teamsters for the 2012 - 2017 CBA and your labor counse''s insistence that he did not intend to negotiate with Teamsters, but preferred reaching interest arbitration, instead, our labor team offered to mediate a deal between your Office and Teamsters. You declined that offer and hired outside counsel to represent you in negotiations. The County agreed that having outside counsel would help move the ball forward with respect to your Office reaching a deal. We committed to working with your team to bargain the appropriate way, which is to address language/work rule issues first, followed by economic issues which should be contingent upon the work-rules; a package deal. While this is the standard order in which the issues are presented, the deal should be signed as a package deal at the same time. If one party signs the deal without the other, it weakens the other party’s position at the bargaining table, as the leverage is significantly diluted. We honored that commitment even after Teamsters asked the County to address economic proposals prior to finalizing its $ Fiscal Responsibility @ Innovative Leadership @ Transparency & Accountability [¥ Improved Servicesdiscussions of work rules with your Office. Unfortunately, your Office committed the error you incorrectly accused the County of making; you signed your agreements with Teamsters without Cook County being present and without the County having completed economic negotiations. This weakened the County's bargaining position and was not consistent with your stated desire to work as one team. While your letter notes that your team discussed the need for “significant changes to the contract” with respect to “systemic absenteeism or overtime issues,” your team presented zero proposals to reach that end. Of the 18 proposals you presented to Teamsters, none addressed overtime, absenteeism or the IOD language. In fact, the only conversation your team had with us regarding the IOD language was to explore the option of expanding the language to other unions within your Office. Further, when we probed beneath the surface of the 10D language to determine the root cause of the increase in IOD claims and payments, we discovered the increase is due to your Office's failure to implement a protocol to manage and approve IOD claims. For example, your office approved |OD claims (many of which merely were bodily fluid claims and not physical injury claims) based solely on incident reports and not medical documentation Your disappointment in the deal is misplaced. It should lie with your Office’s negative bargaining history with Teamsters, and your team’s inability to accomplish work rule changes in the last round of bargaining, Significant contract changes often require incremental changes over a number of rounds of bargaining and the very nature of contract negotiations implies a give and take and a bargain for exchange. Your "systemic absenteeism or overtime Issues” or any other major issues could not have been resolved in one round of bargaining, especially when that has been the status quo for a total of nine years. You have to build relationships, build trust with your employees and be willing to give something in exchange for what you hope to receive from the unions, Even though the bargaining history placed your Office in an unfavorable position, Cook County negotiated with Teamsters 700 to achieve language changes that support your stated objectives. The 2012-2017 collective bargaining agreement will be amended in at least five ways to assist your Office in achieving its articulated goals. ‘© Teamsters 700 agreed to allow the Sheriff's Office to do home visits when officers/investigators are on sick leave. Officers/investigators now are required to remain home for the duration of missed shifts while on sick leave and they must report their movement if they leave their home for any reason. Violations will result in discipline as outlined in the CBA itself, which is unprecedented. This language will serve as a deterrent from employees fraudulently calling in sick, which, ultimately, will impact absenteeism and overtime, '* Teamster 700 agreed to allow Sheriff's Office to increase the number of hours of benefit time employees are required to use while on FMLA from 96 to 160. This language should assist with absenteeism as employees are required to use benefit time concurrently with FMLA. + Teamsters 700 agreed to a sick time buy back pilot program which incentivizes employees to sell their lunused sick time back to the County at the end of the fiscal year. It is an attendance improvement initiative intended to deter frivolous use of sick time during the fiscal year. ‘* Teamsters 700 agreed to reduce the sick time accrual from 175 days to 100 days. This change in the language is an overtime reduction initiative. It reduces overtime by addressing the employee practice of using significant sick time banks just before retirement, creating the need for other employees to work overtime to cover missed shifts. © Teamsters 700 agreed to a three hour call-in notification when employees use benefit time. This language allows the Sheriff's Office additional time to schedule employees to cover missed shifts instead of instituting overtime.Cook County did not abandon its obligations and responsibilities. We bargained in good faith and worked with your team to the extent you were open to receiving our assistance. We included your Office in all negotiation sessions, offered our assistance to you throughout negotiations and made significant strides with Teamsters on your behalf. We look forward to continuing to work with your Office to navigate your relationship with Teamsters 700 and implementing the next CBA once itis approved Sincerely, Fy Velisha L. Haddox Bureau Chief Bureau of Human Resources