City Aims to Field Inspectors to Catch Work Shirkers

A two-person crew of government inspectors will cruise the city of San Diego searching for--and reporting on--city workers goofing off on the job under plans revealed Thursday by city officials.

The pilot project is slated to start in the Water Utilities Department, which will hire the inspectors and which has nearly 1,000 employees scattered about the city on any given day, working in manholes, repairing pipe or performing other jobs, according to Assistant Personnel Director Kent Lewis.

However, the inspectors, who are modeled on inspectors general monitoring Navy work sites, will have authority to report on any city employees they find not performing their duties, said Deputy City Manager Roger Frauenfelder, who heads the city’s Water Utilities staff.

“If the individuals find somebody else out there, white collar or blue collar, goofing off, they won’t be restricted from writing them up because they aren’t Water Utilities” employees, Frauenfelder said.

No Undercover Work Involved

No undercover or surreptitious observation of employees is planned. The clearly identified workers will respond to citizen complaints of employees slacking off and may make random checks of job sites to ascertain that city employees are working at assigned tasks, Frauenfelder and Lewis said.

The job may take the inspectors into city office buildings to check up on white-collar workers, Frauenfelder said. They will not be involved in any criminal investigations, he said.

‘They’re Going to Be Known’

“What we’re not trying to do is be surreptitious about it,” Frauenfelder said. “They’re going to be known.” He said the mere knowledge that such a unit exists may deter shirkers.

Leaders of two unions representing large numbers of city employees said Thursday that they need more information on the proposal but were generally critical of the idea.

“I think it’s a waste of taxpayer money,” said Susan Levine, secretary-treasurer of Local 127 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 2,000 city workers, some of them blue-collar Water Utilities workers. “That’s why the city employs supervisors. It sounds like they’re paying for something they’ve already got.”

Kathy Rollins, senior field representative for Municipal Employees Assn., which represents 3,500 city employees, said, “We’d be concerned about the spirit that ‘the plan’ is implemented in.”

Rollins said she was surprised to learn that the plan is going forward because Bob Ferrier, a city labor relations official, told her Wednesday that the initiative was merely a rumor.

The city has the authority to implement the plan without negotiations with labor unions representing its more than

9,000 full- and part-time employees, Lewis said. However, he said the matter will be discussed with union representatives.

Described by Frauenfelder as “conceptual,” the plan was unveiled to city department heads at a meeting Wednesday. According to one department head present at the session, the announcement brought reactions ranging from grumbling to requests for the inspectors’ assistance.

“A few said, ‘I want you to come down and check on my guys,’ ” Frauenfelder said.

Still undecided is when the program would be started, how much the inspectors would be paid, and how they would be identified. Frauenfelder said he hopes to have the details ironed out within a few weeks.

He said that he, City Manager John Lockwood and Water Utilities Director Milon Mills first discussed the plan Monday, and all agreed that it was an initiative that they wanted to pursue. Frauenfelder was unsure whether council approval of the program is needed.

Frauenfelder said occasional instances of city employees sitting at restaurants for long periods draw irate calls from citizens and damage the image of the city work force. It is such incidents that the inspection crew is designed to eliminate, he said.

“That’s the thing we can’t afford,” he said “It’s that 2% or 3% who are really screwing up our image.”

An inspector suspicious of an employee would write down the worker’s truck number and would approach the worker to determine whether he was on a coffee break or lunch break, Frauenfelder said. Levine said contracts with the city entitle some Local 127 workers to two 15-minute coffee breaks and one 30-minute lunch break each day.

The inspector would report any malingering employee to his supervisor, who would be responsible for disciplinary proceedings, Frauenfelder said.

Describing the idea as an “honest effort to try and improve our service ethic,” Frauenfelder said he knows of no U. S. cities that employ such inspectors, but said they are used by the Navy, much to the chagrin of some workers.

“It’s very new. It may not work. It is certainly going to be criticized,” Frauenfelder said.