Important updates for CFS Senior Social Workers
Dear CFS Social Worker,
The CFS Caseload Management Forum (CFS CMF) is held the third Wednesday of every month at 9:00 am. The next CFS CMF is scheduled for Wednesday, June 16 and it will be held via video/audio conferencing. The conference call details are provided by management in advance of each meeting.
CFS Stewards Needed
It is important that we maintain the CMF as a safe space to address workplace issues with management. Your OCEA Bargaining Teams fought hard to get the CMF and other mechanisms for pursuing workplace fairness into our negotiated Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the County.
As stipulated, the CMF will discuss and develop specific recommendations including, but not limited to, the following:
- Improved management information systems;
- Relationships between workload and performance expectations;
- Manageable caseload levels within budgetary limitations; and,
- Methods for achieving equitable distribution of cases.
Just as the muscles in your body need to be worked to maintain strength and flexibility, the mechanisms your colleagues created at the bargaining table to solve workplace problems need to be exercised. It's use it or lose it. We recently canceled scheduled CMF meetings due to a lack of participation and agenda items for discussion.
As with any challenge the union faces—a pandemic, a divided electorate, or anti-worker candidates—one of the solutions at OCEA is building power through Stewards serving as workplace leaders. Please consider becoming an OCEA Steward. Contact OCEA Sr. Organizer Alisha Greene should you have any questions or concerns. To learn more go to OCEA’s “Get Involved” page by clicking here. You can also click here for a Steward Information sheet. Also, if you know of any social workers who are the go-to-person or leader in their program, feel free to let us know by nominating them as a potential steward! You can click here for a Steward Nomination and Petition Form.
We want to make sure your workplace issues are being represented at the CFS CMF, and the best way to do that is having representation and leadership from every program.
CMF Agenda Items Needed
If you would like to submit any items for this month’s CMF agenda, please send them before Thursday, June 10. to me at kwolf@ocea.org or OCEA labor representatives, Saliem Aregaye at saregaye@ocea.org, Danielle Chau at dchau@ocea.org , or Charles Leon at cleon@ocea.org. Please let us know if the agenda item pertains to a specific CFS program or to a broader topic.
Standing together, we can make sure workplace issues are being addressed.
In Solidarity,
Kate Wolf
Labor Relations Representative
Publication Date: June 4, 2021
