INSIDE SCOOP:
CQUE - PRODUCTIVITY MEASUREMENTS
Issue 2007-001,
Todd Erickson, CWA Local 7200 Area Vice President
http://cwa7200.org/Avp's/Inside%20Plant.htm
24th Avenue Qwest Central Office Technician
(todd9500@msn.com, Pgr: 612-622-4738, Hm:
612-789-4400, UH: 612-722-7200)
1. CQUE - CENTRAL OFFICE QUALITY AND EFFICIENCY
Central Office management has officially started their productivity measurement
tracking system for Central Office Technicians and Frame Attendants as of
January, 2007. The productivity measurement tracking system is called CQUE and
stands for Central Office Quality and Efficiency.
I believe management will cover CQUE with all Office Technicians by the end of
February, 2007. CQUE measurements are based on installation and repair in three
areas: Design Services, DSL (Digital Subscriber Line), and POTS (Plain Old
Telephone Service). The repair and installation of these three telecommunications
services compromises a total of six categories to be measured by management.
Measurements will be based on average time and quality of work items in these
six "buckets" (management's term).
Supervisors plan to meet with workers on a monthly basis to go over their
scorecards in the six categories. According to management, they will have
the final January scorecards ready around March 11. I wrote a note to Manager
Pat Morsching on
Manager Morsching said that the reason for this
delay is because there could be work items that are completed off at less than
100% in the month of January. She also said there could be I/R Reports that
come in 30 days of the initial work task. She did say the February 14 scorecard
did give a January prelim report.
When it starts out, the CQUE Performance Plan will give an unsatisfactory
rating to a Central Office Technician if they do not meet the minimum standards
in efficiency or quality in 2 of the 6 categories for 3 consecutive months.
Central Office Technicians will receive no grade in a category if they don't
reach a minimum amount of work items to be measured. That means it won't
count either way - positive or negative.
We will probably start seeing documented discussions of some Central Office
Technicians starting in May, as management will have the final scorecards for
January-March at that time. These documented discussions will include being put
on a development plan that will closely monitor the Central Office Technicians'
results during the April-June period. If things don't turn around in the April-June
time frame after the initial documented discussion, management will most likely
start implementing progressive discipline for each step of the process as
follows: written warning, warning of
dismissal, and then a possible firing. I am expecting to see some CQUE
disciplines in the 3rd quarter of this year.
Central Office Technicians should not take this productivity measurement
tracking system lightly. When you are on a development plan, you basically have
a target on your back. We have watched for years how Outside Technician
management, under Vice President Renae Coddington's leadership, have used productivity
measurements - Quality Jobs per Day (QJD) - as a knife to many outside
technicians, and a blunt one at that. It has caused major damage to the morale
of the outside technicians as they feel set up for failure with the various
system roadblocks and the lack of information on how to improve their
scorecards. Hopefully, CQUE won't prove as bad as OJD.
In 2006, CWA Local 7200 AVP’s Dan Jerde and Dave Barthel, filed 98 grievances related to OJD on behalf the Outside
Technicians they represent. CWA Local 7200 has had some recent success with
management; in getting other time spent on various work functions, included
into the entire measurement processes. There are many "time-waster"
activities that Network Technicians have little control over such as, taking 45
minutes to arrive at a customer's place only to find they are not home;
therefore hurting their OJD scorecard. These P&I reports (Person not In) are killing productivity rates for Outside Technicians.
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PROTECT YOURSELF: There are things you should consider doing
now to protect yourself later. By the time you get a documented discussion, it
will probably be two months down the road from the time you did the work. Being
proactive now, could save your job in the future.
As an Area Vice President, I view every negative scorecard as a documented
discussion, whether management presents it that way or not. ALL negative
paperwork in your file can be used against you at some later point.
We recommend that Central Office Technicians and Frame Attendants
take the following steps:
1. Start developing a paper trail of any and all work that you were involved
with throughout the day. If you install a T1 circuit and did all the
appropriate test steps, make a note of that on the word document, date the
document, and then file it where you can find it. If you had to make a lot of
design changes to get the circuit working, you should note who you talked to
and the time it took you to accomplish all of this. When you wire up a DSL or a
POTS circuit, and note a positive test result, consider saving that paperwork
for six months or more.
2. When it comes to repair tickets, go out of your way to be very thorough in
explaining what you did to complete the trouble ticket. Most Central Office
Technicians already do this, but let's be extra vigilant in this area. Quality
of our test processes and our documentation strategies - need a much higher
priority these days.
Take time to find out what happened to make the circuit fail. Keep that
evidence with the repair ticket. We want to make sure that things you fix are
not charged to you if you weren't involved with the initial installation of the
circuit.
3. Track non-install and non-repair work items. There are plenty of
miscellaneous tasks that are needed to run an effective Central Office that
deserve to be on your electronic time sheet.
When you are roving to other Central Offices, keep a log of your travel
trips in your own personal notebook. Track time left and time arrived, along
with the mileage. We have found the company's GPS system to give inaccurate
readings of company vehicles, at times. By keeping a log, you can prove where
you were, at what time.
4. Take a look at all the time allotted to the various work types at the
Central Office Homepage to get a familiarity of time allotted. For example, the
Central Office Homepage allots X amount of minutes for the five units assigned
to a DSL. You should know all these numbers.
Encourage Central Office Technicians to not low-ball time
worked. This undercuts the work of the Central Office Technicians. We
should give an accurate picture as to what it takes to complete work and resist
the temptation to brown-nose management.
5. Take time to scrutinize those scorecards and documented discussions that you
receive from management. We should challenge any charge that we don't believe
is accurate or fair, by submitting (in writing) questions about the charge. Grievances will be filed where necessary.
6. If you are working with a test center, make sure they give you a ticket. I
don't think management has a good feel of how disruptive all those telephone
requests can be to the work process. We need to help the system get a better picture
of what we do.
7. Communicate in writing to your supervisors about your concerns. Verbal
discussions will not help much if we are trying to represent you in a meeting
and you have no documentation of it. It is better if you just develop the paper
trail via e-mail communication.
PERSONAL LOG BOOK: If you do have verbal discussion with your supervisor about CQUE, take time to date it and explain the details of the conversation in your log book. Everyone should make sure they have a system to log things on a daily basis. Be careful about securing these log notes after each entry. Either take it with you each day, or see that it is locked in a cabinet.
We ask that Central Office workers think about developing their own list of questions to assist the Union Representatives in doing their jobs. Once we leave a meeting with management over CQUE, we expect to request further information from them about the information they gave to us - so as to better understand what is going on.
I do understand that some of our Central Office Technicians will not be covered in the same manner when it comes to CQUE. For example: Power Central Office Technicians have a different type of work and will not face the same measurements. The same goes for the night shift.
OUTSIDE TECHNICIAN PRIORITY: I am a proponent of giving Outside Technicians
priority, if at all possible. When assisting Outside Technicians be sure to
take the time to make a test assist on your electronic time sheet. Outside
Technicians are our allies and we need to work well with them. Keep those
trucks rolling so that we help Outside Technicians provide quality
service to the customers.
In conclusion, CWA Local 7200 Union Representatives can do a much better job in
protecting Central Office Technicians and Frame Attendants from unfair
discipline, if you keep a detailed paper trail. Make sure you contact your Local
Union Steward about negative scorecards, documented discussions, and
disciplines.
REMEMBER YOUR RIGHTS AS A UNION MEMBER: If you are having a discussion with management and have a "gut feeling" that discipline or other adverse consequences may result from what you say - ASK FOR UNION REPRESENTATION!! You cannot be punished for the request. If there isn’t a Union Representative present, you have the right to choose NOT to participate in this discussion.
Read what other CWA Local unions have to say about Quality Jobs per Day
(QJD).
CWA Local 7800 (
CWA Local 7803:
http://www.cwalocal7803.org/Newsletter/volume15issue2.pdf
CWA Central Office workers
united - can never be defeated!