DMV Separation of Duties Meet and Confer Update
Thursday, June 9, 2022

On June 1, 2022, our Union team met with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) again to continue our conversations about the required separation of duties for Driver Safety Hearing Officers related to a recent court order. This was our third meeting on this topic. The information that we received from the Department in this meeting was largely the same as we had learned in our prior meetings.

We had hoped to get insight from the Department about the survey they sent to impacted employees regarding the separation of duties process, but they informed us that they are still analyzing the results and preparing a presentation for staff based on that analysis. They anticipate presenting the information to impacted employees in the next couple of weeks. As a result, the Department was not forthcoming with the survey results to our team, noting only that employees overall were seeking improved training and communication from the Department.

We also asked whether the Department had appealed the court decision, and they informed us that they had not filed a full appeal of the decision, but hadn’t ruled out the possibility of other legal remedies. The Department was not able to comment more on this issue as they are involved in ongoing legal processes.

They did inform our Team that they are working on drafting focused training for impacted employees that will replace the current “Q&A” style meetings on this issue, which our Team was pleased to hear. They are currently working under what the Department considers a temporary plan and system and didn’t provide information about when they anticipated finalizing a permanent plan.

Our Team did offer a couple of concepts that we believed would allow our represented employees to have more input on the duty separation and which set of duties they have been assigned as the Department continues to craft and implement a long-term plan to comply with the court order. We suggested to the Department that they allow Hearing Officers to volunteer for either duty as they update assignments and also suggested that the Department look into forming a work group made up of both management and rank-and-file employees that will collaborate on crafting long term plans.

While the Department did not seem open to the possibility of forming a work group, they were less skeptical of the possibility of soliciting volunteers when they update duty assignments for Hearing Officers. They did note that a process would have to be established in the event that they had more volunteers for one or the other of duties and asked how we envisioned that to be carried out. We suggested the use of inverse seniority, while the department expressed concerns about whether that would result in the most qualified staff taking on each duty. Our team reiterated that this suggestion was conceptual and would require fleshing out by the Department.

We also briefly touched on possible training needs, but our Team noted that without getting a sense of the larger concerns from employees overall, we didn’t have additional solutions regarding training to suggest until the survey results analysis is presented.

We encourage our impacted employees to inform us of any additional changes or concerns they have related to the separation of duties. You can share this information with your Job Steward, DLC President, or Bargaining Unit Chair. If you aren’t in contact with any of those leaders, you can also send your concerns via email directly to unit1@seiu1000.org or unit4@seiu1000.org