investigations, no disparate treatment and discipline. a manager or supervisor may say i need to discipline this employee and they'll consult with their h.r. and talk about what level of discipline is regulated by the labor agreement. for example, they have to take the action within a certain period of time after the alleged violation. if it is a suspension or termination, they'll have a special hearing required under state law. typically the city attorney or staff will prepare the document and they have all the documentation and will go before a hearing officer -- >> supervisor: when they have a chance to go before the hearing officer do they bring legal representation or represent themselves? >> they don't always choose to but they can bring a

representative. occasionally it's a union rep or lawyer. >> supervisor: where are the hearings held? >> they'll be held usually in the department of the manager and they may go to the different department and it's a private meeting. it will be the maybe a note taker. usually a representative of the department but it's really for the employee to set forth why they should not take the disciplinary action. >> supervisor: it's on the employee to defend the actions the city is taking against them to dismiss them. >> only at that level. if it goes through and it is appealed to arbitration, it's the city's burden of proof. the process is designed to make sure all the mitigating circumstances and exonerating evidence and someone gets to hear their story and make sure

there's no miscarriage of justice. [please stand by] .discipline.

>> we usually believe that after all appeal rights have been exhausted. >> deputy city attorney, is that a universal principle that comes from the city attorney's office or is that from one attorney's perspective? >> no. >> one attorney's interpretation. >> deputy city attorney john gibbner. >> the advice we give is from our office considered at all levels, but not just one attorney. >> i appreciate that.

thank you. >> so just to wrap up the disciplinary process, if the person is disciplined, they get a notice and have a right to appeal the discipline. the discipline goes forward. they have the right to appeal it all the way to the arbitration if the union takes the case. and then a binding determination will be made on whether the decision should be upheld, mod pied, or thrown out. in that case, both reinstatement and backpay and clearing the record happens. >> one of the issues highlighted in the september 19th hearing, for me there are two particular items that were concerning. first, medical separation, second being disciplinary dismissals. both seems to be disproportionately high for african-americans. how do you reconcile that? >> i think there's unique

situations. i think the medical releases are driven by the employee's medical condition and their inability to return to work or for us to find a job they can do in the city, which can ultimately need to a medical separation, but i would say it's from the employee medical condition. there are disparities in health across society, and that may be a factor, but i'm not an especially deemologist. >> you know, what's interesting i'm hearing what went on in the police department. right? we knew that there was -- i introduced and then we passed legislation several years ago to begin to track the data. who is being stopped, when are they being stopped, where are they being stopped with some frequency to begin to capture a numeric picture to see if there's any bias, explicit

racial profiling. it seems that, quite possibly, the department of human resources could also be participating in this so we could better understand the concerns that we hear from the gao hearing so we hear -- please, you're distracting me. >> i apologize. >> for members of the public, if you hear something you like, use your support of fingers, and if you don't like it, thumbs down. that's helpful. it seems like we need to do a better job of keeping track of the numbers. that way when there are claims that say, hey, listen, black people are being fired at a higher rate, there's a number, there's something that points to say, actually they're not. or, yes, there's a problem.

let's go ahead and look into this. it seems ambiguous. my concern is the system seems very objective. one of the things we worked with with law enforcement agencies ensuring that there was a bias -- implicit bias training. we worked together on that. at that time, i was super maniacally focused that every single officer and the sheriff's department, that's a work in progress, but certainly the sf pd, that we get everyone trained. in a hearing during that time several years ago, i think it was 2015, i also advocated that i thought department heads should be going through training as well as particularly departments like dcyf where there's money being desimilar nated to -- disseminated to different areas. one of the way we can combat

bias is educating ourselves. i don't need to educate you. you know about bias. you've gone through the training, but one thing you can consider as director of dhr is we can move it. we go through ethics training, sexual harassment training. that way people can't say, i didn't know. also, while we're going through these trainings, that we're capturing the data. because as of right now, we just don't know. that concerns me. it concerns me with some of the anecdotal stories that were shared in gao's hearing, the hearing supervisor kim presided over. there were concerns that came out. our job, and the reason we're sitting here as a full body, is to find a way to legislate if there's a way to correct this. now, we've heard at the

beginning of the hearing about the executive directive. now, that came before the gao hearing, so perhaps people were unaware of what mayor breed put out, but to members of the public, i'm happy to furnish the mayor's directive on what she has explicitly laid out. if i'm not mistaken, you and the mayor were collectively putting those policy directions moving forward. is that right? >> yes. >> can you do me a favor. can you summarize for me the mayor's directive so those members of the public that haven't had an opportunity to read the letter themselves could get a feel for, i believe it's five -- >> yes, i have them here. >> okay. let's take it from the top. >> okay. i'm assuming we'll start with the directive elements, the five points. >> that's right. >> thank you. recruitment, dhr will hire two full-time staff to focus on diversity recruitment.

there will be diverse candidate pipe license. a, it will serve as a centralized department. they will work with departments to work with and ensure that efforts are coordinated. this should occur as quickly as possible and be included in the fy-19/20 budget. training, item two. dhr will significantly expand his harassment prevention and bias and cross cultural communication trainings to more employees. all hiring managers and supervisors must take the training beginning january 1st, 2019, and biannually there after. all hiring managers, supervisors, and other employees who apartment in hiring panels must take a new in hiring online training beginning january 1st,

2019, and biannually there after. there's some other trainings that i mentioned that are complimentary. all city departments will begin reporting discipline to dhr so problematic areas can be quickly identified and addressed. this reporting also ensures greater transparency and discipline in departments. a, dhr will distribute a checklist to all departments to ensure greater fairness. all departments will -- >> read that again. >> all departments -- this is what we're putting in our system. >> yes. >> all departments will begin collecting certain

employment-related data by january 1st, 2019. >> do you hear that, everyone? data is going to be collected starting january 1st, 2019. mayor breed put this directive forward. it goes across the land and shall be made so. >> and we've lacked visibility because they've been in paper files in hr offices in each department. so this way we'll have access to the information. going on, the first report by july 1st, 2019. the report will include information on discipline, including written warnings, suspensions, and terminations, as well as probationary releases, and improvement plans. dhr will use this reporting to identify problematic areas and work with departments to correct problems. solutions that may be applied include cross-cultural communications training, targeted supervisor coaching, supplemental review of proposed discipline which was administered to employees. discipline of employees

administering discipline. and any additional training or other measures which may be required to ensure fairness in the workplace. dhr should take steps to develop an electronic personnel file and the system to support it in order to ensure consistent and accurate data collection and reporting. item four is communication. on issues of equity and diverse in the workplace is for trust and accountable. dhr will work collaboratively to continue ways the city can improve on diversity and equity in the workplace, and it's in effect immediately, of course. >> okay. thank you. thank you very much. i appreciate you reading that into the record. my sense is that is not very -- that's not very known publicly. there was no media attention. there was no media coverage on that, but that's why we're here. okay.

supervisor brown? >> thank you. thank you, president cohen. i want to thank you for asking a lot of my questions. i did get a lot of them answers, but i have a few others. i want to thank the workers from seiu local 21 -- 1021 and the department heads for coming back today. and everybody that's here, i know you probably take a day off or half a day off from work to come and sit here again. when i first heard this at jao committee, i mean, my first response was that sirens are going off, and there is really disturbing. we needed to really address the complaints and concerns of the african-american workers in this city. and especially when i read the numbers, the disparities were evident and glaring.

you said this today. people keep repeating that the number, the percentages of african-americans that work in the city are so much higher than the percentage of african-americans that live here. there's a thing that makes me really fume. through decades of city practices, we have pushed african-americans out of this city. the thing is this is still their home, and their community is here. so to use these numbers, i think, is really disturbing and disrespectful, and i wish the city would quit using and saying, we're hiring double or triple the amount of african-americans that actually live in this city. [ applause ] >> i would really ask everyone to stop saying that because i represent a large african-american community -- not as large as it used to be, of course. a more western edition.

i can't tell you how many people i see -- i see them in the neighborhood. they say, i can't live here anymore. i can't afford it. i was pushed out, but my mom is still here, my aunt babysits my children. my kids go to school here. this is their community. so let's please stop saying that. it's just not right. [ applause ] >> i have a couple of questions. so when i was looking at over 65% of the african-american workers employed by the city and it's represented by seiu are employed as a low-paid -- the job classification. these make up about 5% of workers in the highest paid classification. how do you account for that disparity, that we only have about 5% of our african-american workforce in the higher classifications? i know a lot of people that are

educated, have been trying to work for the city, and have been applying over and over again and have not been hired. >> audience: that's right. [ applause ] >> i think it's a continual challenge. we're operating in a society that has a history of discrimination, and people also are not sometimes prepared for the jobs that we have. so it's our challenge to create -- [ cheering ] >> -- it's our challenge to prepare them for those jobs by having pipeline programs and bringing them in. it is not okay if people are using non-job-related criteria the screen people out, and that's why i think there probably is bias in the decision-making, which is why we have to intervene with things like deidentification and ensuring diverse hiring panels and hiring those individuals on those hiring panels and trying to create a culture in which

people recognize the value of diversity. it is a problem. you will see, for example, while -- look at the police department. we have the labor market availability for people to be police officers, we're ahead of it, but it's not high enough, and we need to do more. you know, we're working with the department to do more. they have a very aggressive recruiting program for women of color and trying to have a diverse workforce. the people, it is one of the jobs that's predominantly white in the city, and that's one of the higher paid jobs. similarly, registered nurses are of the five jobs that have white people, it's registered nurse, police sergeant -- it's a problem. i think what we have to do as a city is instead of putting up the job application and waiting for people to apply and selecting from the people who apply, that we go out and bring

people along. and it's job development. maybe we need to be looking more toward building our internal capacity in our departments so people can promote. i do think we're a better employer than the private sector and, frankly, most public sectors. it doesn't mean we're great and that we're doing everything right at all, but we can build on the merit system and the principles of non-discrimination and fairness and make sure people have access to those better jobs. >> you're saying you think we could do this, like go out and recruit people. is that part of your plan? >> yes, it is. >> it's in your written plan? >> yes, in the mayor's written directive, we've met with the workforce development to improve the pipeline, people getting into city technical jobs. we've created a new classification last year for

trainees. with the cooperation of local 21, we revised our qualifications for technical jobs. if it doesn't require a college degree, let's take it out of the requirement and come up with the fact that there are many ways to qualify for a job. certain jobs were limited. for example, engineers, register nurses, they need licenses, and we have to deal with the people that have those licenses. maybe we can bring people along and help them obtain a license. i think that's definitely a good direction to explore. >> one more question. how does the eoc track bullying complaints, and does it look at and consider race, gender, age, when investigating those kinds of claims? >> there's no -- the eeoc does not have a category for bullying. >> they don't? >> no. no. and we have an anti--- well, i would call it an anti-bullying

process that's in the handbook. we have a new training module we're also rolling out to try to enforce it. i think a lot of what happens, whether it's related to race or gender or other discrimination, it's just rotten behavior, and it doesn't belong in the workplace. some of the things i heard about at the hearing in september were absolutely extremely disturbing and have no place in any workplace. we don't want our employees subjected to it. >> right. that's what we heard at the jao hearing. a lot of people felt like they were bullied, and then they were bullied to the point where they couldn't take the job anymore. so a lot of them took a medical leave. it was a mental health medical leave because of the bullying. so this is kind of the stuff that i think maybe that needs to be highlighted, even though you don't have a bullying policy or you do have one, but you don't track it. maybe that's another thing you should track. and then what happens to that employee when they have made

those complaints? are they going out on medical leave? i mean, that might be the reason why. i think these are the things we should be tracking also, if it's not already. >> all right. thank you. >> correct me if i'm wrong, you don't track that. >> we don't. reallily anytime someone treats someone badly or in a disrespectful manner -- what will happen is when we're investigating a, let's say, discrimination complaint, we may identify that there was disrespectful conduct, bullying, et cetera, and what we typically do is work with the department and say you need to issue a respect policy or investigate whether there was workplace, violence, or poor conduct investigation. i think it may be valid to track. we can absolutely look at that. >> thank you. one of the things i wanted to point out is, again, in this

directive, the number one point that the mayor points out is about recruitment. recruitment of staff members to focus on

collected on a lot of different levels. when we look at our workforce in

san francisco, angitis really important that we are the best employers, and we set an example as a public and city of what the private sector should be doing. so we have a greater responsibility than the private sector to do better and be better, quite frankly, because we could be setting the higher bar and the example. in san francisco, something has happened. as a fourth generation san franciscoen, i was around when our black population was 13%. and when we have a black population in san francisco that's less than 5%, it's overdue that we go beyond this directive and start to collect data that is pertinent to what is happening to our racial and our ethnic and our racial diversity in san francisco. when we look at what makes our employees feel safer overall, it

is also about economic security. it is about housing. it is about all these other opportunities that actually make for viable lives, and therefore healthier lives and therefore healthier employees and also a healthier society for san francisco. i believe this ethnic and racial diversity is something san francisco for decades has prided themselves on and shown the nation that we can lead in this way. however, when we see a black population now of less than 5% in our city, i think that is an indication that data should have been collected years ago when we first started to see this dramatic migration and pushout of our black community. even though today this hearing is being opened up by our black workers in san francisco, i believe that it is for every --

and i said this earlier. for every one person that share this is story, there's 100 other people who are suffering in their jobs under issues that they feel are not being resolved. and that is not just the black community, but i also want to speak for english language learners, chinese, hispanic, and our lgbt and transgender community. i would like for us to have an office of an equity and racial equity so we look at our policies, at all of those types of -- how are, for example, black families fairing in san francisco. how is that helping our black

population. in san francisco, where we claim -- we're the most self-proclaimed diverse city and to have a black population of less than 5% is embarrassing and not saying who we were as san francisco. i know this hearing is centered around the executive directive. i think it needs to go farther. in order for us to truly get down to what are the issues and what it is -- what is the institutionalized racial system we have in our system but what has been embedded systemically and sophisticatedly that allows for the racism to continue to erode some of our systems that we have here and what we're trying to do here in san francisco. so i think that i would suggest that we need to have an office

of equity and inclusion in san francisco so we can make sure everyone is thriving here, and every family -- [ applause ] >> -- regardless of your race, or if you're an english-language learner, that we can build viable lives. it's not just about the employment. although, i've already said that there's no social justice without economic justice. i think it is really important to look at what people are maki making in relation to other race, and that is really, really important. and the san francisco unified school district, we look at -- it first started at looking at a graduation rate and the african-americans were not graduating from high school. it made us look at everything else that's happening and the

equitiable chances to everyone. there has to be recommendations, not just about our employment and our workers, but really recommendations about what it takes to have a viable life here in san francisco. when you're only less than 5% of the population in the city in which you live, that has an impact on who -- how you feel about who you are and your purpose in life and really how welcoming we are here in san francisco. and it is no surprise that this would bleed over to a workplace here in san francisco. so i am looking forward to hearing stories today. thank you for coming. i also want to also thank president cohen for having this hearing today and to thank our mayor for the directive that she

has executed. but, again, i think it needs to go farther. it needs to go deeper. it needs to be broader for us to fully understand the impact and what is really happening here in san francisco about our retention of even keeping a diverse san francisco. [ applause ] >> thank you, supervisor. >> come on, now. we went through the rules. >> i have not had a chance to watch the gao hearing, but i've heard how impactful it is and plan go back and watch it. but i'm just wondering, since you have mentioned several times about how you were quite impacted by the hearing, if

there's any concrete lessons or policy changes that you have thought of that came out of that hearing that you can share with us today. i'm very much looking forward to public comment and hearing those stories today. >> thank you, supervisor. i think what was the most compelling, when people are talk about how they're treated badly at work, whether it's a coworker or supervisor, and feel like they don't have anywhere to go with it, that nothing has happened, what i don't know is who did they tell? did that person not respond? only about 14 of the people who spoke, of the 64, had filed an eoo complaint. if they don't feel like their human resources can take it or be fair and follow-up, then we need to look at other options.

i know mr. riffkin can speak about it, but they have a numbers person who has been deployed there, an experienced hr professional that's not part of the hr team, who's able to address the team and she's been listening to complaints and coming up with recommendations and dealing with that. probably the biggest impact from my perspective and my team that are here, we need to really pursue for aggressively the conduct complaints and make sure people know where to go with them. >> yeah. and so this person is where? in what department? >> so there is an ombudsman person, a retired official from the city, who's kept active over the years, and the mayor asked her to go in and assist mta. she's been at mta for long time. she's been doing a lot of

listening to employees. did they make a complaint? did they get heard? making sure systems are in place so people have a place to go. to me, it's an combination of ensuring the systems are in place, people have a place to go, and the accountability for when they do complain. sometimes it's just suspicion, but a lot of times it's probably not. and certainly the cases we heard about here, it was pretty awful. so we want to make sure that we know about those and that somebody is doing something about them. >> and why do you think that people aren't filing complaints with the eoc or with human resources? >> well, we actually get a lot of complaints, and we take them seriously and always follow up, but i think sometimes people may decide not to file one, or they may feel like they don't want to make trouble or it wasn't a big

enough issue. a fair number of our complaints we get, which come in through the eeo process -- we can't accomplish it as an eo connection. let's say, for example, we have a supervisor that said you berated me because i'm a female. then we find out that the supervisor berated everyone. so we need to deal with the supervisor. maybe people feel like they don't have a place to go. that's going to be the challenge, figure out how we can do that. i think that's going to be part of the issue. what is the best way to approach the issue? how is the best way to make sure people feel heard. san francisco cannot afford to lose employees, whether it's because of medical issues or anything else. we invest in training. we value diversity. we don't want people to feel like they can't work here or

it's not a good place for them. so it's our responsibility to find out what is going on. with a good data collection, we'll get a better window into it, but also having a process that we can develop with some of the labor and community groups. i think that will help address that issue. >> i'm glad to hear there's an ombudsman person at the mta, but this whole conversation reminds me of why my former -- my predecessor, david campos, tried to pass a measure. the idea was that there was a separate agency when people didn't feel safe, that was a position to go to the make these sensitive complaint where is people don't feel safe making them in-house. i'm assuming that's what's going on here. you know, in line with supervisor fewer's idea for an

office of racial equity, if there was independence from the rest of the city family, i think that's something we should look at. new york has an office of the public advocate, and really having a place where someone can make a complaint that isn't under the same supervision chain as their supervisors themselves. we all know these systemic issues exist. we have to address them. but we have to do it in a way that there's enough independence that people feel comfortable, and they're not going to suffer further retaliation from bringing these complaints forward. i know you're working on this, supervisor fewer, but maybe considering a component, whether

it's an independent complaint mechanism, that would be interesting. >> thank you. >> any other colleagues that would like to get on the record and have a chance to speak to the director? supervisor salve -- safia. >> i think when we have loud voices talking about their experiences on a daily, annual, monthly basis, i think it behooves us to take a deeper dive. i appreciate all the comments from my colleagues. i think it's important to consider the historical circumstances upon which people enter into the workplace, the experiences that they've had in their own communities, and not just what is reflected today, right? i saw the charts about the percentage of the workforce of african-americans as reflected, but also how that percentage is

either grown or shrunk over time. i know at one point when the population was a lot larger, it would be interesting to see what was reflected in the workforce then and how it's either grown or shrunk over time. i think that's some of the frustration that's reflected today, not just the workforce overall but what positions they're in, positions of authority and positions to make determinations on hiring as well. i think that's certainly important. and i think once you're in position of making determinations on hiring, i think those are more positions of power and those positions reflect -- not to say that there ends up being bias in an opposite direction, but it also influences how the direction and the thinking and the department and the sensitivity is. so i think those are all really important things to consider as you move forward. >> thank you. >> i think i can just speak for a minute about the deidentification. why we hope that it's going to make a difference is we've

identified situations where there's a group of people who are reachable. they pass the test, and they could be hired. and we look at -- it's a diverse pool. we look at who gets invited to interview, and it's not diverse. that's what we want to go after. that's why deidentification is one of the tools we're using. the other part is to ensure hiring panels and having more training and particularly implicit biassed training. people may not realize they're being discriminated against. it's a combination of policy tools and training. any one of those is not enough. >> the only thing i would add is what the reflection of the workforce is by department? i think some departments may be doing better than other departments. i don't know if you had that presented in your information. >> actually, it's all up on the website now. >> in today's presentation? >> i don't have it in the presentation. i'm happy to send it.

i think some of it depends on the kind of work that's done by the department. transit operators, they have a high african-american, high latino, high asian, low white. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. one thing that struck me when we were discussing about the collection of the data, just to be consistent with the example that i used earlier with the san francisco police department is just that we require the police department to come and report to us on a quarterly basis. perhaps this is something we need to implement as it relates to dhr and these types of practices, coming back to this body. i know the first report is going to be on july 1st. i'm personally not going to be here, but perhaps one of the members that are going to be here would be able to host the committee of the whole so we can

monitor the progress and be supportive and be helpful to you as we move forward. the other thing that i was thinking about, and i said this in the budget committee in june. it was like midnight, and maybe no one caught it, but we need to possibly begin to tie some of the budget priorities and goals to departments. so, for example, nonprofit organizations, when they want to increase public dollars, they have to quantify it. they have to show how many people they've helped, who they've helped, all this data is reported back to the department and then the department makes a determination through their process as to how much they're going to continue to fund. departments come here. they ask for money. some of which has to do with rfps to fill these recs and positions. we don't know who they're recruiting to. it's left to the department

head. i would be curious what departments are doing well and which ones are not. i understand we don't have all of that data at our hands, but i hope we begin to move in that direction so there's some kind of direction and accountability that as we're trying to move people out of poverty, move people out of homelessness, and move people into a better position that our departments, if they're not meeting their marks, that perhaps we shouldn't be funding them at the level we're asking. that's just me thinking as the chair of the budget committee, and that's a little bit out of scope of the budget and economic issues we're having today. i know for a fact that bias manifests in different areas. it's not just in the police department and the hiring and recruitment. again, on budgets, what nonprofits are getting funded and which are not. so that's a lot that we've dedicated to the director of

dhr. thank you. i see no other names on the roster. so we're going to continue with the presentation. i think we've got mta up next. all right, director, welcome back. >> you. t the -- thank you. >> okay. the floor is yours. >> thank you, president cohen and members of the board sitting as the committee. director of transportation. just two quick slides to walk through to give you an overview of kind of what we're doing as it relates to the topic of the hearing. i thank you for the opportunity to have this opportunity to present and for the discussion, which i think is an important one for the city. so, first, with regard to the strategic plan, we have a strong ethic of strategic planning to give us framework for policy, budget, operational decisions that we're making as an agency. we had a strategic plan that we

put in place in 2012. it was a six-year plan. so in the last few years, we were -- we went through a process of updating our strategic plan. and recognizing some of the issues that are the subject of this hearing as being important and perhaps not as explicitly present in our strategic plan. we did a couple of things. one is that we had a much more deliberate process of establishing values from the agency. one is a definition that includes promoting a diverse and fair workplace. i realize that should go without saying, but we thought it important to make it explicit values of the agency. this was approved by the board of directors. there are four goals within the plan. one of the goals is create a

workplace that delivers outstanding service. what we did in this round -- or in this update of the plan, was add an explicit objective around creating a more diverse and inclusive work force. again, it's something that i think we were doing somewhat ad hoc or always felt was important, but i felt that it was important to elevate it into an explicit objective of the strategic plan so it provided very clear direction to all of our hiring managers, to all of our employees, that this is an important and explicit objective of the department. so there are a number of new things that we'll be starting to do as a part of this and to the earlier conversation about data, trying to make sure that we have good data upon which to build the changes that we need to make to realize this objective. there was already a lot of talk

in your last conversation about targeting recruitment. i think we have in the past been a little bit more passive. we post the job and who applies applies. so in the last year, even before this strategic plan got adopted, we started focusing and targeting recruitment such that at acbu and at the trade associations. there's one called the council on minority transportation officials. we've been engaging with them, national association of black engineers, those kinds of groups so we can make sure more people are aware of the opportunities we had. director callahan mentioned we have jobs in the agency that are overrepresented by african-americans and people of color, but by looking at the data of the agency there's areas

where that's not so much the case. using that data to target recruitment and making sure we have diversity within the various levels of the agency that are reflective of the people we serve is something that we're focusing on. as i said, the strategic planning is an important part of the agency. it's something we report on regularly to the board that, we make the data available publicly. it's not just a document that sits on a shelf. it is an integral part of what we do at the agency. other thing we've done, we've stepped up. there was mention of training. we've done training for maybe 70 or 80 folks. a great source from human resources came in and did bias training for all the leadership.

now we're expanding it to others in the organization, particularly including those in public contact positions, like parking patrol officers, station agents, customer service folks. starting to expand that out. there's other types of training we're doing and under the executive directive, we'll be expanding within the agency. we have an internal function within the agency as a federal grantee. we have certain requirements under federal regulations for any eeo program that we have to have, including having an eeo officer and doing some of the kind of data collection that's called for in the executive directive, but that function also sets kind of eeo policy and does things such as ensure

diversity of panels. reviews the candidate pools, the final selection of candidates. to make sure we're following equal opportunity. there's underlying cultural issues that can create problems that then go into a complaint process. so a number of years ago, we established what we called outstanding workplace committee. that is representative in terms of demographically and classificati classification-wise, people who

have been advising me and the agency on what we need to do to improve the culture of the agency to root out some of the issues that you maybe heard about in the previous hearing. in the last few months, i've started myself meeting with employees, sometimes in small groups, sometimes in large groups, to understand what some of the experiences that are having are, what they think are kind of the underlying characteristics of the agency that create those experiences, and then as well some of their frustrations with the process, like, what do you do to your question before of, you know, why don't people report things or why are people frustrated? so to try to understand that so that we can fix those things. we've sent a number of folks through the training, the hrc has been a great partner and really supporter, kind of consultant to us in terms of bringing racial equity lens to policy decisions that we're making. there's a whole framework that

they've introduced to our agency, and we're getting more folks, putting for folks through the successive cohorts. not just how we deal with things internally, but how we deal with the public. there's racial considerations as we go into a neighborhood to talk about a bike lane or bike share situation. as director callahan mentioned we're working with the office of workforce development and other stakeholder groups as well as some of the professional associations with regard to recruiting to make sure that we are doing our best to take advantage of the great asset that president cohen mentioned, people who know the city, care about the city, who could be great candidates for city employment. and then, finally, director

callahan mentioned mayor breed assigned or deployed the seasoned hr professional to the agency to kind of give us an outside look. we're having a lot of various issues in the agency. i actually was going to try to get a consultant to come in, much better and faster was mayor breed's deployment of somebody who already understands how the city works, who knows the city, who has respective folks in the city but is outside the city to come in and get a sense of what's going on inside the agency and particularly deal with complaints. >> is that under way? >> it is under way. she started a month or so. >> who is this personal? >> delores blanning. she was with the city for a few decades. spent time at the airport and a number of different agencies. she's come back as a retiree employment -- employee to help

fix things. she's in charge of process improvement, but she's serving an ombudsman process role. employees are going to her to say, here is what my issue is, and here is how the system is not working for me. she's looking at our process, at the eeo investigation complaint process, and really coming up with a number of recommendations, which i think will be very helpful. her options have been very helpful, anticipating what will be coming out with that, what i recognize is that our own -- we have not given our own managers and supervisors the training that they need to be effective in dealing with some of these issues before they become bigger issues or to not be the issues themselves. so i've started working with director callahan and her staff, as well as the city attorney's office to develop a series of

trainings for hr professionals within the mta but then for all managers and supervisors. anybody who supervises anybody else in terms of kind of a catch-up course as well as a bit of process change so that we have kind of a better business process, and then we're training our folks in the process so we don't have issues that aren't getting addressed, which is what i've been hearing a lot from my employees has been the case. we're starting that and hoping to get something up and running by the beginning of the year. we'll fold in whatever recommendations come in from the alm busman person. so this lot we have moving in that area, we recognize there's a lot of need for and opportunity. we appreciate the opportunity for this conversation that this hearing provides. i will be happy to answer any questions. >> thank you. does that conclude your presentation? >> it does.

>> i appreciate it. colleagues, i don't see any names on the roster. i don't think we have any questions for you. thank you for your presentation. i do have one question. you can answer from the staff box. why -- how come there's no uniform hiring process? why is it every department has its own process? why is it just uniform? -- why isn't it uniform? >> they're governed by policy, but within the authority granted them under their charter there's latitude for how to do it. we do, for example, if a job is posted and it looks like it's targeted for one person, we'll take it down and consult with the department, but the structure is basically decentrali decentralized processes for the larger departments. they have the ability to make decisions about using the

practices we've trained them in about what kind of exam they want to use, for example, or what recruitment would be the best. we were just talking about when we get our recruitment resource, we're going to create a diversity tool kit, building on some of the work that some of the more advanced departments have done in this area to provide to all departments and say, these are places to go to ensure diverse recruitment, but in terms of the process itself, it's going to depend on the kind of job, whether you expect 1,000 applicants or you're hoping to get five. the process will depend on that. >> thank you. next we're going to hear a presentation from the department of public health. then we will hear from human service agency. and then we will hear from representatives from sciu 1021.

>> good afternoon, madam president and members of the board. greg wagner, acting director of the department of had been health. so we have in our priorities for the department and our strategic goals, one of our goals being public health is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace where all employees are treated with fairness, dignity, and respect. and i will tell you about some of the things that we are working on, but i also want to be clear that we have a long way to go. there's a lot of work to do over time to get us to where we need to be. we have a list of items up on that screen here. we've added two new fge recruiters, and part of the role of those recruiters, as was discussed in the hearing, was to discuss outreach when we have positions, to increase the pipeline of black and