Three of five proposed additions to the Shawano County employee handbook were approved by the County Board on Wednesday, while the other two were returned to committees for additional discussion.
Proposed changes for building maintenance and jail employees will go before the Public Property and Public Safety committees, respectively, in December because they were not discussed there prior to their approval by the Administrative Committee on Nov. 14.
Supervisor Robert Krause said home committees should at least be advised of the proposed changes before final approval.
“Our department head (for building maintenance) still has some questions,” Krause said. “There were a lot of questions about how this affected the employees.”
The approved handbook additions, which apply to social services, technology services and the highway department, passed with little opposition.
The following changes are expected to be added to the handbook, which is tentatively scheduled to return to the County Board in December:
• Social services — On-call pay of $2 per hour after normal weekday hours (8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) and $2.75 per hour for weekend hours (4:30 p.m. Friday to 8 a.m. Monday). Only one employee shall be on call at a time, and if an employee is called to render services, he or she shall receive compensatory time off.
• Highway — Employees will be reimbursed up to $150 per year for safety shoes.
• Technology services — Employees called to work outside of their regular hours will be guaranteed two hours pay at their regular rate, even if the work needed takes less than two hours.
Supervisor John Ainsworth questioned why social services would be allowed to have on-call pay while technology services or building maintenance would not.
Supervisor Deb Noffke pointed out that state statutes require counties to give social workers on-call pay.
“With social services, that is the ultimate unfunded state mandate,” Noffke said. “It is required statutorily to provide the service, but there’s no mechanism for funding, nor do they even say you have to pay them, but you have your fair labor standards.”
Rick Kane, social services director, pointed out that social workers on-call are required to respond to incidents within 45 minutes and that they have certain powers akin to a judges, like detaining people or removing children from a home.
“We require sobriety, and we require them to be into the community,” Kane said. “Last weekend, they were involved in a 14-hour on-call situation. There are a lot of things going on in this community and this county after hours, and we have to respond to it.”
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