Brenda has left the building
Brenda Digges, the city's Human Resources Director, has effectively been fired. In a memo issued December 4 by Assistant City Manager Mary Holcombe and approved by City Manager Marty Black, Digges was ordered to turn in her keys and employee ID immediately. The memo announced the date of a scheduled "pre-determination hearing" in which Digges would be formally terminated due to a laundry list of charges The pre-determination hearing, originally scheduled for December 13, has been postponed indefinitely due to Digges' health.

News of Digges' firing was withheld from the media but slowly filtered through the city's internal gossip network. When asked on Friday, December 14 by this web site, Black hesitantly confirmed that Digges had left the building: "She's on formal administrative leave until that runs out, pending the pre-determination hearing."

Thumbing your nose
While Digges' unnecessary battles with the city's unions over the past two years can only be described as horrendous, they were apparently considered of little importance. Instead, Black and Holcombe accused Digges of a wide variety of other ills in the December 4 memo. Words and phrases used in the accusatory memo to describe Digges' performance included the following:
   "inefficiency;"
   "verbally abusive;"
   "conduct unbecoming a city employee;"
   "conduct which might impair work performance;"
   "behavior which might cause distress to colleagues or otherwise contribute to disruption;"
   "conduct which bullies or intimidates staff;"
   "symbolic thumbing your nose at senior administration."

The memo states that Digges had been given the opportunity to address stated deficiencies in a prior unsatisfactory performance evaluation. The memo states that Digges had turned the performance improvement plan over to her subordinates and ordered them to accomplish the goals, then blamed her staff for the subsequent failure to meet performance guidelines.

Evergreen Study and union wars
Digges' time with the city has been controversial at best. Her support over the past year of The Evergreen Study to restructure pay scales and benefits for city employees was particularly contentious. As a result of policy adoptions from the study, mid- and upper-management city employees received substantial raises. The city's worker class complained of small to no raises combined with substantially increased deductions from their paychecks for health insurance.

Digges' record of handling union grievances has been nothing short of disastrous. The two most recent union grievances that the city has settled are prime examples.

One grievance settled in August (which is being reported here to the public for the first time) went through the formal arbitration process.  In that class-action grievance, the city stood accused of not paying earned overtime to its utility workers over a period of four years. An arbitrator ruled against the city and ordered that the complaining city workers be given back-owed overtime for the contested four-year period. Due to federal wage and hour claim limitation laws, the city was legally allowed to limit the award to a two-year period, a partial win from city hall's perspective that did not sit well with many of the city's employees -- while the city saved taxpayers' money by not having to pay legally earned overtime for worked hours over a two-year period, the city's employees felt that they had been legally ripped off.

In another grievance (again, this is being reported here for the first time), City Engineer Nancy Woodley and Public Works Supervisor Al King were accused of discriminatory practices in screening applicants that were hoping to laterally transfer into available vacancies within the city. According to a grievance filed by city employee Dan Tucci, Woodley and King involved themselves in a number of illegal discriminatory practices, including asking applicants if they belonged to one of the city's unions. Woodley and King were also accused of asking if the applicants had ever filed any union grievances, this as a condition of receiving the sought-after transfers: "...any employee who had filed a grievance was a troublemaker and would not be considered for the job."

The union grievance against Woodley and King was settled when the city backed down immediately after seeing which way the wind was blowing in the unpaid overtime arbitration.

According to AFSCME union local president Ralph Hamann, merely asking about union membership as a condition of employment or transfer is not only a violation of the city's contract with the union but a violation of federal labor laws. Ditto for the illegal discriminatory practice of asking about possible prior grievances that might have been filed by the employee.

Another 20 or so grievances still in the works
With some 20 or so more grievances still in the pipes (and the likelihood of more embarrassing rulings in the future), Digges' line-in-the-sand attitude to fight all grievances had earned her the status of being nearly universally hated by workers on the city's payroll. Unofficial sources have stated that Digges' authority over making decisions in union matters was severed by Black shortly after the August grievance settlings. According to Hamann, the union's biggest complaint with Digges was her antagonistic attitude towards unions and how that fueled her refusals to instruct city department heads to honor the city's contracts with the unions, which, in turn, led to yet more grievances.

Under Digges' authority, the city has fought every grievance filed at every step of the grievance process with the singular exception of the Woodley/King grievance. The city settled that one in the union's favor just prior to arbitration, which is the final step in the process.

Hamann states that he has complained to Black a number of times over the past two years about Digges' refusal to enforce honoring union contracts by supervisors and department heads. Both Hamann and Black have stated that the issue has been addressed within the past few months, but this would be after the city started losing in arbitration.

Likewise, the Fraternal Order of Police has been highly critical of both Digges and Black. In 2005, the FOP accused both Digges and Black of using invented financial statistics in the union contract negotiations of 2005, an accusation that city hall eventually admitted was true. Those negotiations were so contentious that the police actually picketed city hall during a council meeting.

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.