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Iowa Senate has new personnel guidelines on harassment, retaliation

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Charles Schneider

The Iowa Senate has a new “harassment prevention” policy and an updated code of conduct. Republican Senator Charles Schneider indicated a month ago when he was elected president of the state senate that updating senate “personnel guidelines” were a priority.

“First, to make sure that all those who work in and around the Iowa Senate have a clear understanding of what constitutes harassment, sexual harassment and retaliation,” Schneider said today during the Senate Rules Committee meeting, “and second to make sure that everybody understand the process for addressing complaints when they arise.”

Last fall, the state paid $1.75 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a former Iowa Senate GOP staffer who was fired in 2013 after she complained of harassment. Last month, the senator who fired Kirsten Anderson resigned after online photos and video showed him kissing a lobbyist. Schneider was elected to his new leadership position after that senator’s exit.

Schneider told said the new policy requires annual training for every senator and for all employees of the senate as well as interns. There will be a yearly review of the anti-harassment policy to ensure it’s keeping up with “best practices” in the public and private sectors.

“We wanted to make sure that we created an environment that people feel safe in to come to work and that people feel safe to send their kids to and we just knew we had to get it done,” Schneider said after the meeting.

Senate Democratic Leader Janet Petersen said it took nearly five years after the firing of an employee who was harassed to get to this moment.

“I’m hopeful that this will be a first step in the right direction to changing the culture and making the Iowa Senate a more welcome and opening place for people to work,” Petersen told reporters.

Senators unanimously voted this afternoon to update the Senate Code of Ethics as well. The update makes it clear the Senate Ethics Committee has the authority to receive and investigate complaints of harassment or retaliation. A senator’s clerk was just fired April 3 after a “credible complaint of harassment” was made. That clerk, who functioned as a secretary to Republican Senator Waylon Brown of St. Ansgar, was a paid employee of the senate and had recently completed anti-harassment training.

Senator Petersen said it appears the same male clerk had previously been fired from a similar job in the Iowa House.

“Even with the training that everyone who serves on the senate floor went through, to see misbehavior like that shows that we’ve got work to do,” Petersen said.

Senate Republican leaders say the new human resources director for the legislative branch will help keep personnel policies updated and avoid similar situations in the future.

Senate Democrats unite, refuse to retain official who oversees union votes

By

Tony Bisignano

Democrats in the Iowa Senate have refused to allow the state official overseeing re-certification votes for public sector unions to keep his job.

Governor Kim Reynolds nominated Mike Cormack to serve another term as chairman of the Iowa Public Employment Relations Board, but Senate Democrats refused to vote to re-confirm him for the post in protest of the Republican-led effort last year to reduce collective bargaining rights to public sector workers.

“Mr. Cormack is nothing more than a casualty along the lines of the war you started,” Senator Tony Bisignano, a Democrat from Des Moines, told Republican senators .

Bisignano said Cormack’s management of the re-certification votes was part the “massacre” of public employee bargaining rights.

“This battle’s continuing and I can’t think of a more worthy cause to take the sword up, to fight and die for, that representation by a union,” Bisignano said.

Senator Jason Schultz of Schleswig is the Republican who guided the collective bargaining bill through the senate a year ago.

“If (Cormack) is to be a casualty of the war that we started, that can be agreed to because Mr. Cormack has done nothing to lose this job,” Schultz said. “…He did his best in an incredibly difficult situation.”

Cormack put in a heroic effort” according to Schultz. Schultz also thanked Democrats for not attacking Cormack personally.

“He’s been a fantastic human being,” Schultz said. “…I thank you, again, for not running him through the mud on a personal level. It’s fair to bring up the policy implications.”

Cormack, a Republican, served four terms in the Iowa House representing his hometown of Fort Dodge. He’s a former a teacher and coach in the CAM School District in Anita. Cormack served as president of the local teachers union in the district.

Glasson’s campaign staff forms a union

By

Cathy Glasson

Employees of Democrat Cathy Glasson’s campaign for governor are the first campaign staff in Iowa to unionize.

Glasson led the effort to form a union for University of Iowa Hospitals employees 18 years ago and she issued a statement saying she was honored and proud to recognize her employees’ union. Michael Fasullo says he and other Glasson (GLOSS-un) campaign workers wanted to set an example.

“It’s really important that electoral campaigns don’t just ask for votes from unions, but actually are doing everything they possibly can to uplift and elevate workers’ abilities to find new ways to form and join a union,” he said. “…I think it’s important that we walk that walk.”

According to the Campaign Workers Guild, Glasson’s is the second gubernatorial campaign in the country to unionize.

The Iowa Republican Party issued a statement, saying the other five Democratic candidates for governor will be “all talk and no action” if they fail to follow Glasson’s lead, since all six Democratic candidates say union bargaining rights are a priority for the party.

(By Iowa Public Radio’s Katarina Sostaric; additional reporting by Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson)

 

ISU study finds change in the type of labor used in pork industry

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Immigrant populations are starting to fall in rural labor markets, according to an Iowa State University study commissioned by the National Pork Producers Council.

ISU economist Chris Boessen, one of the study’s authors, says the pork industry is making gradual yet major shifts. “In the last couple of decades, the hog industry has changed dramatically from operations using a lot of family labor, sometimes paid, sometimes unpaid family labor,” Boessen says. “That’s more or less gone away as we’ve intensified and gone to more of a high-tech, capitol-intensive, more-concentrated production.”

Boessen says the study shows the labor market has changed in Iowa and across the region. “You have a lot of growth, a lot of hiring in the hog industry, it needs a lot of workers,” Boessen says, “but at the same time in the last few years, the labor market’s really tightened up from 10% unemployment in 2009 to 4% and really below 4% in a lot of the main hog states here, especially in the Midwest.” The change in U.S. immigration policy has contributed to a shortage of foreign ag workers, but Boessen says it’s more than just that.

“We’re moving into a period now where we’re going to worry less about a wave of immigrants and worry more about how we’re going to manage a workforce where we have fewer immigrants,” Boessen says. “The immigrants who are here are aging and retiring and there’s lots of things happening in other countries, immigrant-sending countries. People are getting better educations, better economies, more opportunities.” As conditions improve elsewhere, he says immigrants have less motivation to come to the U.S. NPPC officials say in addition to this study, data compiled by U.S.D.A.’s Economic Research Service shows a reduction in the foreign-born workforce prompted by a change in immigration policy would not be offset by native born workers and permanent residents.

The council is backing Congressional legislation calling for an H2C visa to allow non-seasonal foreign ag workers to stay in the U.S. for up to three years.

(By Jerry Oster, WNAX, Yankton)

 

 

Iowa Business Council survey shows economic growth expected in next 6 months

By

Georgia Van Gundy

Leaders of Iowa’s largest employers are predicting economic growth over the next six months, but they’re also concerned about an ongoing shortage of qualified workers.

A new survey from the Iowa Business Council (IBC) shows 80% of its members expect higher sales through summer. IBC executive director Georgia Van Gundy says those employers are struggling to attract and retain a quality workforce.

“We have our 2.8 percent unemployment rate and Iowa ranks fourth as far as the number of people already employed in the workforce,” Van Gundy said. “We just don’t have a lot of people to draw from.”

The IBC recently formed a Business Education Alliance to get at the root of the problem. “Our first meeting was great in February. Our members had the opportunity to talk about what their challenges are and we had a great conversation about how we start moving forward,” Van Gundy said.

According to the survey, half of the IBC members say they will increase capital spending and nearly half forecast hiring more workers over the next six months.

(Thanks to Rob Dillard, Iowa Public Radio)

 

 

No change in state unemployment rate for third straight month

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The state unemployment rate held at 2.9% in February, marking the third straight month at that level.

Iowa Workforce Development spokesman Cory Kelly says some businesses have still been adding workers despite the very low unemployment. “We saw a decrease again in unemployed Iowans — that went down to 47,900 from 48,300 in January. That estimate is about 8,500 lower than one year ago,” Kelly says. He says the number of jobs has steadily been increasing from last February when the unemployment rate was three-point-four percent.

“With nine-thousand-900 jobs having been added. That growth has been mostly concentrated in private service sectors, and that’s about five-thousand-700 jobs,” Kelly says. “Although goods producing industries have also been trending up.” The job additions have offset loses — with one area in particular continuing to see fewer workers.

“Construction is again shedding jobs in February — now marking the fourth consecutive loss stretching back to October,” Kelly says. “As a reminder, last year we had historical highs (in construction jobs) and we are coming off of those and going back to a state of normalcy,” Kelly says. Kelly says Iowa’s unemployment rate continues to be one of the lowest in the country.

“Nationwide the unemployment rate remained at 4.1% in February,” Kelly says, “Iowa’s currently ranked sixth nationally, tied with Maine and Wisconsin.” One Iowa city stood out on the national stage.

“Ames has the lowest unemployment rate for the entire United States for this past month of January,” Kelly says. Ames had an unemployment rate of 1.8% in January, just ahead of Honolulu, Hawai. Kelly says we’ll know next week if Ames held that spot when local unemployment numbers are released again.

 

ABI survey finds optimism among businesses for second quarter

By

Mike Ralston

A new survey from the Iowa Association of Business and Industry finds three-quarters of the business members expect increased sales in the second quarter of this year — with the rest expecting them to stay the same.

ABI president, Mike Ralston, says more than half the businesses expect to add more employees.  “The good news is that this is the second quarter in a row where we see this optimism, so hopefully it’s a trend,” Ralston says. He says businesses are seeing a lot of good things in the current economy to make them optimistic.

“Employment’s up, sales are up, revenue is up “You’ll notice in the survey there was a lot of talk about capital expenditures — so that’s always a great sign,” according to Ralston.

“Seventy-nine percent, almost 80 percent of the survey respondents plan to make a capital expenditures here in the second quarter of 2018. And that’s fantastic.” There are a couple of concerns amidst the optimistic figures.

“The first concern that we saw is one that we’ve seen for many years here in Iowa — and that’s people,” Ralston says. “…it doesn’t matter how big the company is, where it’s located or what industry it is in, everybody is looking for people. Hiring and being able to find enough people is still a concern.” The other concern involves the administration’s talk about trade issues.

“At ABI we believe more markets are good and free trade is good and there is a lot of concern about the president’s comments and actions related to trade and that sort of thing. So, that’s a concern too,” Ralston says. He says two key trade issues impact Iowa businesses.

“He’s been very aggressive on renegotiating NAFTA. NAFTA has been a huge positive for Iowa…and then to talk about steel tariffs on top or it. Our members are already seeing an increase in their costs. All of that is a real concern,” Ralston says. Ralston says they’ve expressed their opinions on the trade issues and can only sit back and wait. When it comes to finding workers — he says companies are trying all sorts of things to get people hired — including adjusting shifts and working hours.

“Maybe somebody’s going to work four hours in the morning and four hours at night and they want some time to do family stuff in between,” Ralston explains. “People are looking at split shifts, and I believe data shows wages are rising. All those are reflections of a tough labor market.” ABI is comprised of 1,500 member companies of all types and sizes in all 99 counties employing more than 330,000 Iowans.

The survey results may be found here.

 

Future Ready workforce development plan clears legislature

By

Craig Johnson

A bill to bolster programs that help Iowa workers of today and the future acquire new skills passed the Iowa Senate without a dissenting vote today. Senator Craig Johnson, a Republican from Independence, said the bill will have “a huge impact” on the state’s economy.

“One of the biggest concerns for businesses in the state is finding quality employees,” Johnson said. “The programs contained in this legislation are going to help reduce the skilled workforce gap in Iowa.”

Summer internship programs, new state financing for apprenticeships and mentoring for college students are all mentioned in the bill. While Democrats joined Republicans to support the measure, some questioned whether Republicans who control voting majorities in the House and Senate will follow through later with the money to make the programs run.

Senator Bill Dotzler, a Democrat from Waterloo, promised to eat the cover of a book about the so-called “Future Ready Iowa” initiative if that money is provided.

“I’m going to hope and pray that we can put our money where our mouth is and this isn’t some phony marketing program to sound good at election time,” Dotzler said. “I’m tired of that.”

Dotzler was part of a “Future Ready Iowa” task force and the group’s recommendations have been Republican Governor Kim Reynolds’ top legislative priority.

“Everyone knows how important it is that we have a skilled workforce,” Reynolds told reporters earlier today. “Job creators, businesses all across the state, they are energized. They tell me business has never been better. They’re projecting significant growth. They just need people.”

Democratic Senator Matt McCoy of Des Moines,  who did vote for the bill, called it “the re-elect Kim Reynolds plan.” Early in the debate, Senator Nate Boulton, a Democratic candidate for governor, unsuccessfully tried to delete a section that calls for spending half a million dollars on marketing and promotional materials for the “Future Ready” effort.

“This is a pen that says ‘Future Ready Iowa’ on it. It’s being handed out to people that are going to be wanting Kibbie grants, but not able to get them,” Boulton said. “We’re handing out bandannas to people that cannot get a Kibbie grant, but they’re going to get a bandanna to tell them about it.”

Republicans like Senator Johnson say it’s important to market the program, so people know there are options for training beyond a high school degree.

“Iowa employers continue seeking skilled workers to better compete in markets at home and abroad,” Johnson said.

The bill already passed the House unanimously last week and is headed to the governor for her signature.

Ivanka Trump discusses ‘work of the future’ in Iowa (AUDIO)

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Ivanka Trump with Governor Kim Reynolds.

Ivanka Trump, a senior advisor to President Trump, this morning visited a high-tech center where central Iowa high school students are working on projects for local businesses.

“This is an unbelievable example of innovation in education,” Trump said, “and pairing the skills being taught in a classroom environment with the jobs in demand in the modern economy.”

Trump met with students in two classrooms to see what she called their “work of the future.”

“I was personally very excited to see so many young ladies who were here today because women and minorities have been traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields,” Trump said. “And, as we embark on the fourth industrial revolution, it’s critical that trajectory changes.”

After the tour, Trump sat down for a longer discussion with state officials, teachers, people from businesses involved in the center and students. One student said he had a “light bulb moment” when working on a construction site that has changed his perspective on what he can do after high school.

Trump replied that she had a “special place in my heart construction,” prompting the crowd to laugh. “My old life as a builder — I understand why you’re passionate about it.”

Ivanka Trump at a forum with Governor Kim Reynolds.

Trump promised “a very important component” of the president’s infrastructure proposal would be investment in broadband for rural Americans.

“To be able to innovate and grow their businesses and develop themselves,” Trump said, “by being connected.”

Trump also said efforts were underway to ease federal regulations for apprenticeships and expand the federal work-study program to more employers.

AUDIO of discussion, 40:00

Republican Governor Kim Reynolds hosted Trump, starting with an early morning breakfast at the governor’s mansion, then the tour of classrooms at what’s called the APEX center in Waukee. Reynolds pressed for changes in federal college grant programs — so the grants could be used by high schoolers who take classes at community colleges.

After Trump left, Reynolds told reporters she hopes the “First Daughter” takes that idea back to Washington.

“Really providing flexibility to states, so that we can be innovative and think outside of the box,” Reynolds said.

Trump did not take questions from reporters. Before she arrived, students and staff at the center were warned if they asked Trump questions about politics or “current events,” they’d be escorted out by the Secret Service.

The Iowa Democratic Party held a counter protest at a city park in Waukee, accusing Ivanka Trump and Reynolds of pursuing an agenda that “puts special interests ahead of workers.” The chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party said while is “claiming to care” about American workers, she outsourced production of Ivanka Trump-branded shoes to China.

State funding approved for roadway access to new fertilizer plant near Clarion

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The state Transportation Commission approved funding Tuesday to help with roadway access to a proposed fertilizer plant in Wright County.

The director of the DOT’s Systems Planning Office, Craig Markley, says the state funding is for the ReNewtrient 1 plant. He says the commission awarded $144,000 from the Revitalize Iowa’s Sound Economy program to help build 2,000 feet of roadway to connect access to Highway 69 southeast of Clarion.

The plant will take a byproduct of the poultry industry and turn it into something useful. “They’re a nutrient recover facility. Their proposal is to take chicken manure and process it into both the liquid and the dry — and then sell it throughout the states,” Markley says.

Markley says the state transportation funding will help improve access to the plant site with the promise of jobs attached.

“It’s proposed to create 12 new full time jobs within three years with a little over 25 million dollars in associated capital investment,” he says. He says the jobs will pay well for the area.

“At 22-25 an hour it’s quite a bit over the 16 dollar-an-hour average labor shed wage rage — so very good jobs,” Markley says. Developers says the plan will process some 150,000 tons of chicken manure each year from area poultry plants into dry and liquid fertilizer.