March 25, 2008
Ad Hoc Meeting to Prepare for Meeting with Senior Department Officials
Associate Deputy Secretary James E. Cason has asked to meet with leaders of DOI-sanctioned employee organizations in the Department (Notes from meeting with
James Cason on March 27, 2008, provided below.)
Interior GLOBE understands that one of the purposes of this meeting is to
increase the Department’s engagement with employee organizations and jointly
discuss and investigate ways to enhance recruitment of a diverse workforce.
Interior GLOBE President Ike Kelley recently met with Sharon Eller, Director,
and John Borden, new Deputy Director, of DOI’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to
review planning for this meeting. Interior GLOBE previously prepared a briefing
document for Sharon that proposed and focused on GLBT diversity initiatives
designed to increase the competitiveness of the DOI workplace.
Changes to DOI grievance procedures affecting GLBT
employees
Ike recently became aware of plans to change the Departmental Chapter on
Processing Complaints of Discrimination on the Basis of Sexual Orientation. Ike
discussed this Sharon Eller and John Borden in OCR and obtained a fuller
description of what is transpiring.
The Department addresses discrimination complaints as part of the formal
grievance process. Interior recently modified its grievance process to focus on
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) as the principal means of addressing
complaints. Therefore, the Office of Hearings and Appeals will no longer hear
cases involving discrimination. This hearing process had been a major element of
the previous process for discrimination complaints on the basis of sexual
orientation. Like all other discrimination complaints, complaints on the basis
of sexual orientation will follow the procedures for ADR with appeal rights to
the Office of Civil Rights. Where statutorily-protected discrimination
complaints have the additional option to appeal to the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC), this avenue is not available for complaints on
the basis of sexual orientation, because sexual orientation is not a
statutorily-protected class. However, complaints on the basis of sexual
orientation can be appealed to the Office of Special Counsel in OPM, if the
complainant is not satisfied with the Department’s decision.
The Office of Civil Rights has agreed to update the brochure describing the
procedures for processing complaints on the basis of sexual orientation to
remove the OHA leg of the former process and to include instead a description of
the appeal process through OPM. We will distribute the brochure to the
membership when it becomes available. The Office of Civil Rights has also agreed
to meet with the membership to describe the new procedures more fully. This will
most likely occur in the June time frame. We will keep you posted on the
schedule.
June Pride
Last year, the DOI Office of Civil rights changed its policy regarding support
of special emphasis program observances to henceforth only support one annual
employee diversity event to include all special emphasis programs. This is the
reason there was no June Pride event last summer. Recently, however, Interior
GLOBE has come to understand that this does not preclude bureaus and other
organizations from sponsoring observances and programs. They are, in fact,
actually encouraged to do so. Consequently, Interior GLOBE will investigate
opportunities to reinstate June Pride as a “bureau(s)-sponsored” event this
summer.
Employee Group Meeting
March 27, 2008
Meeting convened by Associate Deputy Secretary Cason at 2:10 PM.
In attendance:
Associate Deputy Secretary, James E. Cason
Staff Assistant to Mr. Cason, Monica Noe
Another staff assistant whose name I did not catch
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Performance Accountability and Human Resources, Paul Hoffman
Deputy Chief Human Capital Officer, Kathleen Wheeler
Director, Office of Human Resources, Sharlyn Grigsby
Director, Office of Civil Rights, Sharon Eller
Deputy Director, Office of Civil Rights, John Borden
Ophelia Anderson, Office of Civil Rights
In addition to Interior GLOBE, groups represented at this meeting included:
Blacks in Government (BIG)
Federally Employed Women (FEW)
Federal Asian Pacific American Council (FAPAC)
Association o f Hispanic Employees of the Interior Department (AHEID)
National Association of Asian American and Pacific Islander Employees of DOI
SAGE (I can’t recall what it stands for, but representing American Indian and Alaska Native interests)
Disability Employment Program
Plus groups whose names I didn’t get that represented tribal education and National Park Service diversity
Mr. Cason opened the meeting explaining that
the idea for it had sprung from conversations he had been having with Sharon
Eller regarding diversity issues across the Department. At her urging, his
purpose in holding the meeting was to engage with the employee groups and seek
recommendations for improving both recruitment and retention of women and
minority employees.
Sharon and Sharlyn both gave brief descriptions of the roles of their offices in
coordinating the Department’s policies on recruitment with respect to women and
minorities and their collaboration with HR offices in the Department. Sharon
also mentioned the MOUs that are in place with selected groups.
Mr. Cason then invited the group representatives to identify any best practices
that they felt could be implemented by the Department to improve both
recruitment and retention. He also asked the groups to provide lists of best
practices in writing, which will be integrated and analyzed for common themes
and possible solutions. Each of the representatives agreed to submit
recommendations to the Department and then identified a couple of particular
practices each that were prominent interests for them. Among the items
identified were:
Conversion of interns, STEPS, and SCEPS to full-time positions
Accountability of managers for meeting diversity goals
Improved recruitment processes
Outreach to diverse communities
Earlier outreach to students in middle schools and high schools
Collaboration with colleges and universities serving diverse students
Coordinated and targeted recruitment at the bureau level, with diversity goals in mind
Improving the attractiveness of the Department to prospective employees, especially younger employees
Unfortunately, Mr. Cason had to leave for a
meeting with the Secretary before I could present GLOBE’s recommendations;
however, the rest of the senior leadership remained to finish out the
discussion. I am happy to report that GLOBE was extremely well prepared for this
meeting. We were the only group to come into the meeting with our
recommendations already in hand. I shared the materials that we prepared last
summer for our meeting with Sharon Eller (attached) and related them in a
broader sense to the needs of all groups.
The Department had not anticipated the level of interest and engagement by the
employee groups and had only scheduled an hour for the meeting. Although
everyone tried to be brief, the conversation ran well over the allotted time,
thus Mr. Cason’s departure before we finished. He agreed to meet again in the
near future to hear additional recommendations and to discuss them in more
detail. All the groups expressed appreciation for the Department’s interest and
willingness to engage with us.
I will keep you posted on the results of future meetings.
Revised:
09/29/08
Robert_J_Veltkamp@nbc.gov