The City of New Westminster is pursuing plans to move park maintenance into the engineering operations department - a move that has some parks employees voicing concerns about impacts on the city's parks.
New Westminster city council has concluded the city will benefit by integrating the engineering and parks maintenance operations. Some jobs will be moved from the parks department to the engineering operations department.
"We are looking at integrating some of the maintenance services of the parks operations and engineering operations. They are in the area of parks maintenance," said city administrator Paul Daminato. "There are things like litter pickup, washroom cleaning, the whole area of turf maintenance and sports field maintenance."
One of the goals of integrating the maintenance activities is to reduce duplication that now exists in services offered by the parks and engineering departments.
"Engineering operations has people who go around and pick up litter in various places," Daminato said. "Parks has people who go around and pick up littler in parks. Instead of operating those separately, we thought it would be more efficient to lump them together."
Daminato said the overall objective is to use the staff and equipment in the most effective way possible. No job losses are anticipated.
George Habib, business agent for the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 387, said the union has been consulted about the plans and doesn't have any major concerns.
"All in all it's not a bad thing, provided that staff receive the proper communication and know why council wants this done," he said. "It is very, very important that a good channel of communication is there. With any change, there is uncertainty. People in general do not like change."
Habib said staff meetings are being held with city employees to explain the changes that will be phased in.
"They are going to be doing the same work. There isn't going to be any change. The only change is who they are going to be reporting to," he said about parks employees who will now work in engineering operations. "From the union's point of view, they will be doing exactly the same thing as they are doing."
Habib said all jobs evolve over time, but if there is going to be anything different, those jobs will have to be reassessed. He said there are some auxiliary employees who now work part-time for the parks department and also work part-time for the engineering operations department.
"By doing this integration, everyone is in the same department," he said. "From the union's position, we hope that would translate into more full-time employees."
The city cites several reasons for integrating the parks and engineering departments' maintenance activities: to create a highly integrated workforce and a unified approach to maintenance activities throughout the city; to eliminate duplication of some activities (such as garbage collection); to optimize the use of available equipment and other resources; to enable more coordinated work planning and scheduling; and to enable cross training.
tmcmanus@royalcityrecord.com
