Jobs of 36 county workers in limbo

NANTICOKE – After a controversial vote of a bi-county board on Monday, the fate of the jobs of 36 unionized Luzerne County employees who work at Career Link offices in the county remains a point of contention.

The Luzerne/Schuylkill Workforce Investment Board voted 20-1, with four members abstaining, to award six contracts totaling $5.2 million for the administration of Career Link programs to three of four companies that responded to the board’s request for proposals. Career Link programs help youths and adults find jobs.

The Luzerne County Workforce Investment Development Agency (WIDA), which currently employs 36 members of American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees Local 1398 to administer the programs in Luzerne County, submitted proposals for the three programs in Luzerne County but won none of the contracts.

The WIB awarded Employment Data Systems Inc. (EDSI) a $2 million contract and a $1 million contract to administer the Employment, Advancement and Retention Network (EARN) program in Luzerne and Schuylkill counties.

The WIB awarded the ReDCo Group an $875,000 contract and a $415,000 contract to administer the Adult and Dislocated Worker program in both counties.

And the WIB awarded a $665,649 contract to administer a youth training program in Luzerne County to Arbor Employment & Training and a $313,247 contract for administering the program in Schuylkill County to ReDCo.

WIB officials announced in March that the board would seek proposals after a state audit found deficiencies in administrative practices or bookkeeping at WIDA and ReDCo. Subsequent checks found that WIDA had not corrected its deficiencies, and the state threatened to withhold funding. The state reimburses costs of all WIB programs, which amounts to $11 million annually.

WIB Executive Director Lucyann Vierling said the state strongly recommended that the board seek requests for proposals for all programs, so the board sought them with the concurrence of county commissioners.

The WIB required through the requests for proposals that the new providers interview any interested current WIDA employees for positions that will be created under their new contracts. Work force consultants told the WIB members that in other similar actions taken across the state, most workers were retained by the new providers.

“Our board members are very concerned about the present LCWIDA workers and want to ensure that they are considered for jobs with the new providers,” Vierling said in a press release.

“Give us a chance. Tell us how to do it and we’ll do it. Just let us keep our jobs, please. We do a good job, we’re hard workers. I don’t want to cry, I just, I need my job. I’m a single mom with three kids,” WIDA employee Sue Miedaner pleaded with the board during a public comment period before the vote.

WIDA employee Marie Kay said officials indicated it was not problems with staffers, but administrative problems that prompted the RFPs. She noted Luzerne County commissioners fired WIDA Executive Director Richard Ammon last week.

“If it was an administrative error, that problem has been removed and you can place your own person in to run the programs the way you want them run. There is no reason to put 41 people … out of work,” Kay said.

After the meeting, Ammon’s former assistant, Candace Skaff, said the reasoning for firing Ammon “was to save our jobs. Now, we don’t have our boss or our jobs. … I don’t know why they made the decision, but it’s definitely not on the up and up. I think there’s something more to this, and it was a witch hunt for the last couple months on Rich.”

Calling the WIB a “Mickey Mouse board” after the meeting, Hazleton Councilman Jack Mundie, a friend of Ammon’s, said Luzerne County commissioners would not “go along with” the WIB’s votes, and that the commissioners have “the ultimate responsibility for this money.”

Commissioners of Luzerne and Schuylkill counties will vote on the award of the contracts at a meeting at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday at Hazleton City Hall.

“I talked to (Commissioners Steve Urban and Thomas Cooney) and they’re not going to go along with this. They might have one vote,” Mundie said, referring to Commissioner Chairwoman Maryanne Petrilla, “but they don’t have two, from what they told me in the past. They’re not voting to give Luzerne County jobs to a Michigan company,” he said, referring to EDSI.

But Urban said he believes commissioners have the final say in the award of the contracts. He said he would not vote to approve the contracts unless proof was provided that assignment of the contracts to private companies would not increase overhead and decrease the level of services provided to the unemployed.

Attorney Robert Saidis, who represents the WIB, said the WIB is sending the contracts to the commissioners merely for their concurrence. He said commissioner approval is unnecessary to execute the contracts.

Cooney said he was disappointed by the WIB votes. Although he declined to say how he intended to vote on Wednesday, Cooney said he hoped state officials would consider the votes of the commissioners Wednesday.