6/26 Weekly Email + Pride Month
This email was modified slightly from the original form - several attachments and documents are not included.
Hi All,
Bit of a long email this week - I have a few updates and then a discussion about Pride Month.
Bylaws Announcement: I am pleased to announce that the bylaws vote was approved by our members. 67 eligible members voted, with 51 in favor, for an approval rate of 76%. I appreciate everyone’s support in this matter and will relay the results to HR. I will follow up soon with some more information about how UB time will be used in the future and a few projects the Exec Team is working on to further distinguish members from non-members.
One quick note - 3 of the original votes (2 in favor, 1 against) were not counted since invalid employee IDs were used. I have an anonymized list of employee IDs of both members and non-members and I could not find those IDs anywhere on that list. The possibility exists that someone who left the City is somehow voting in these elections but I think the likelier explanation is that some people have forgotten their employee ID and are using an incorrect number. Please confirm your ID number before we next vote - verifying IDs is the only way we can ensure only union members vote in these elections.
Member Meeting: I’ve attached the notes from today’s members meeting. Our next meeting will be July 17th (3 weeks from today), 12-1PM at the Tempe Transportation Center’s Don Cassano Room. You can rsvp here.
Employee Survey Followup: I’ve been told by many longterm employees with Tempe that feedback to the City (such as through the Employee Survey) has rarely led to internal change. While there are a few things that directly emerged from past Employee Feedback (such as the Employee Development workgroup), I think the City recognizes that there is still skepticism, and has recently taken several steps to follow up on areas of concern. One example was a 2-day April workshop put on by the Strategic Management & Innovation Office (SMIO). SMIO invited representatives of each department as well as each member of the Six-Sided Partnership (myself included) to discuss 6 questions from the Employee Survey. These questions were the following:
The Director/Chief and Deputy Director/Assistant Chiefs in my department use input from employees to make decisions
I am comfortable with expressing my opinions about work related issues to my department Director/Chief and Deputy Directors/Assistant Chiefs
I have adequate input on decisions affecting my work
I believe my opinions matter at work
I believe poor job performance is dealt with effectively by managers/supervisors in my work unit
I believe exceptional job performance is recognized appropriately by managers/supervisors in my work unit
These questions were selected both due to generally low feedback across every workgroup and because they were closely correlated to overall employee satisfaction. The workshop participants spent 2 days discussing the specific reasons each workgroup had negative feedback in these areas and then brainstormed a series of ways departments could meaningfully improve their scores before the next survey. Stephanie Martinez from SMIO compiled our responses into a report, and then presented it to Directors at a recent management meeting. I’ve attached both the report and the presentation - this should also be available on the SMIO Bridge page in a few weeks.
I should be clear - this report has a series of voluntary changes Directors and Managers can use to improve morale in their area. Not every recommendation makes sense for every department but many have broad applicability and arose from shared concerns expressed by a variety of employees. That said, this is a good template both to address the immediate concerns in the Employee Survey as well as future feedback. It also is something UAEA plans to follow up on in future Labor Management meetings - we think many departments would benefit from implementing at least a few of these recommendations.
Circling back to the beginning, I’m happy that the City has dedicated the resources to addressing Employee Survey concerns. The last survey also had the highest response rate from employees in survey history, so I think skepticism about implementation may be fading. That said, I’m aware there are still concerns from some people about providing feedback and I’ve love to relay those to SMIO prior to them starting the next survey process. One in particular that I’d like to see addressed is that employees with very specific job titles/responsibilities feel that they can’t anonymously share information about their area without exposing themselves. I don’t have an immediate answer to that issue but am open to feedback from those in that situation about how to address their concern.
Segal Job Descriptions: HR is still working on finalizing job descriptions but they should be out in the next few weeks. I have reviewed only a few of them so far. The content of job descriptions is mainly the same but many descriptions of job duties have been significantly simplified to focus only on core responsibilities - one description I’ve seen, for instance, is only a half page, while the old description was 3.5 pages. It does appear that JDQ feedback shaped some of the changes to minimum qualifications and positions’ responsibilities - many roles now require a certain level of education or training rather than equivalent experience.
I don’t have an anticipated date for when new job descriptions will be posted publicly, but I assume it will be close to July 14th when HR will have finished updating Peoplesoft.
Citywide Representative Opening: UAEA has a vacant Citywide Representative position open and we’re looking for interested members to apply. The Citywide Representative role is the “day-to-day organizer” of their workgroup, helping relay information to members and then communicate concerns back to the Executive Team. They help employees with disciplinary actions (they can use UB time for this) and have an active role in shaping how the Executive Team confronts issues. They also would be entitled to a stipend for their work. For more information, Article 6 of our Bylaws goes into detail about everything that they do.
Since we are outside of the election process the board can simply appoint someone to serve in the Citywide Representative role. We will consider any member who sends in a brief bio explaining their relevant experience and why they’re interested.
With that, I want to briefly discuss Pride Month
June is Pride Month, a month-long commemoration of the contributions LGBTQ+ individuals have given to our culture and communities. I know I normally highlight prominent activists in these emails but I thought that might be more appropriate for October (LGBTQ History Month) - as such, I generally just wanted to talk a little bit more about gay rights and the labor movement. I think some people may wonder why I continue to write these history lesson emails and I think it’s worth underscoring a few things. First, labor history is fascinating and not something many people are familiar with - there’s a lot of rights we take for granted that were only given to us through the tireless effort of those who came before. Understanding how we got to where we are today helps us understand both how important our existing rights are and in what areas we still need to focus. Second, I hope I’ve made it clear that labor struggles have a tendency to fail when there isn’t solidarity. Efforts like the Pullman Strike or the push for the 8-hour workweek were derailed because workers (and society as a whole) let xenophobia divide them rather than recognizing the value of being a collective. The more workers you have tackling an issue, the greater your odds of success. Third, civil rights and labor law need to be treated as all or nothing. If employers can mistreat one group, odds are pretty good that they’ll mistreat other groups. An employer who arbitrarily fires someone for their age might also do the same to someone else for their sexual orientation or their ethnicity. Unions need to protect the most marginalized because whatever happens to them could likely happen to the rest of us - as such, it’s really important that we stick together.
To that end, it’s worth talking a little bit about the legal and social constraints that LGBTQ+ individuals have faced throughout Western Civilization. This article goes into detail, but the basic jist is that same-sex intimacy was punishable by death in many parts of the world until the beginning of the 19th century. Even when those laws were eventually repealed, places like England replaced the death penalty with life imprisonment or hard labor. 20th century America saw slow progress towards acceptance - the American Psychiatric Association classified “homosexuality” as a mental disorder in 1952 and didn’t remove it from that category, despite many studies that opposed their findings, until 1974. Throughout the 20th century many queer organizations formed to fight for equal rights - some, like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, believed that the path to acceptance was by demonstrating that gay individuals were just as “normal” as heterosexual people, and did their best to confirm with social standards. Other groups felt that it was pointless to try an appeal to broader society, and aimed to set up communities across the country where people could express themselves as they felt fit. Either way, both approaches recognized the importance of involvement in the labor movement. Each approach recognized that economic prosperity was either a way to mimic the lifestyles of “normal” people or to subsist independently of existing institutions. They also realized that there were massive gaps in existing labor law that allowed blatant discrimination based on sexual orientation. Gay union groups like GALLAN started to emerge in the early 1980’s and larger unions like SEIU added gay-specific caucuses in the late 1990’s. These groups pushed for employment protections that were greater than existing federal or state law and secured certain rights in their contracts (such as the same healthcare and pension coverage for same-sex couples as heterosexual couple) long before any action was taken at the federal level.
Significant employment progress has been made for the LGBTQ+ community in the last few years - the 2020 Supreme Court decision “Bostock v Clayton County,” for instance, ruled that federal law banned employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. That said, the Justice Department has changed their interpretation of that case several times, with the most recent versions indicating that businesses can’t discriminate on the basis of gender identity…but can discriminate on the basis of how an employee dresses or acts, two things which are closely linked to gender expression. Further, progression in employment protections has been matched by regression in social rights, with many states ramping up attacks on trans and gender non-conforming individuals in the last 5 years. According to the Trans Legislation Tracker, there have been 940 anti-trans bills proposed in the US in 2025 alone, with 115 already passed - this is a massive increase from 2021, where only 143 bills were proposed and only 18 passed. These bills make it harder for trans people (and often gay and lesbian individuals as well) to access healthcare, participate in public education, use public restrooms, or even appear in public (there are several states with “anti-drag” bills that are so broad they could apply to women with short hair cuts or men with long hair, for instance). For me, this is deeply disturbing - trans and queer individuals are human beings who deserve respect and dignity just like anyone else. Further, as I mentioned at the beginning, civil rights are “all or nothing,” and attacks on one community will likely lead to erosion of the rights of other communities.
I don’t want to end this on a sour note - it’s worth recognizing and applauding that the last decade has yielded genuine progress for gay rights. Today for instance is the 10th anniversary of the 2015 Supreme Court Obergefell v. Hodges decision which legalized gay marriage nation-wide. That said, there is still a long way to go before LGBTQ+ individuals have true equality. I need members of our union to understand that equality and fair treatment are integral parts of how our group succeeds - attacks on any union members in our group have impacts on us all. Our mission statement says that “UAEA continually strives to improve its members' pay, benefits, and working conditions while defending city employees' rights to fair treatment, dignity, and respect.” That covers everyone - whether you’re gay or straight, cis or trans, or any other part of the queer community, UAEA has your back.
I would be remiss while wrapping this up to not note that Tempe has an Employee-led PRIDE group that discusses matters of concern for queer employees and plans annual events like Tempe’s participation in the Phoenix Pride Parade. The group is small but mighty - they recently just won the “Best in Show” award at the Phoenix Pride Parade. Please check them out and show some support if you’d like - they, like UAEA, will find success through coalition-building.
Happy Pride Month, everyone!