Lost jobs need to be returned to our people!

Some of our members view my blog as being too negative, but when you want to shed light on some things you truly believe are wrong, it’s pretty hard to put a positive spin on it. The truth is, there is a lot of evidence that points to widespread corruption and mismanagement on our Rez, but, for today, I’m going to focus on one issue and what I believe we can do to make it better. The topic is jobs.

First of all, one thing I see is that our current tribal council is spending much of their time acting as a personnel committee. A tribal governing board should be focused on governance, not dealing with employee issues and arguments in the workplace.

We have a firing and hiring committee, or screening and selection committee, whatever it is that they call it. They should be handling these issues, but what often happens is that the employee or the manager takes it the tribal council if they aren’t happy with the outcome. We are a small community where everyone knows everyone and many of us are related, so we have access to our council members, and on the other end, our council members feel obligated to hear everyone out.

In my opinion, the process of filling the spots on this committee and just about every other one is where the problem lies. Whenever the council creates a committee, or a seat becomes vacant, they always post to fill the seats like it was a job posting. What I believe the council should do is that each council member should appoint one member to the committee to be their personal representative on that committee. All committees should be done like this, except for several that should be elected specifically by the people, such as the school board, housing board and the college’s Board of Regents. In either case, the committee’s decision should then be final. Look at it like this; the council member appoints his own representative to the committee in the hopes that the appointee would hold many of the same views, therefore, the person making an appeal would be appearing before his representative.

I’m not sure if this would work, but it’s the closest thing to a person actually appearing before the tribal council. You appear before each one’s personal appointee. Once these committees are given the final say, it frees up the tribal council to focus on business development and overall improvement of the quality of life for our members, by creating jobs..jobs..jobs. If the tribal council didn’t have to deal with personnel issues every day, they would find a lot more time for planning and providing our tribe a direction. They also wouldn’t be beholden to their voters because now they wouldn’t be responsible for the outcome of all these personnel decisions.

When I’m elected to the council, I will press for this idea or at least some sort of solution to the overwhelming time spent by our tribal council on dealing with employee issues. The council should be spending more time creating jobs, not babysitting them. They should be focused on improving the quality of life for our members, which is making sure that every one of our members who wants a job, has a job.

And speaking of jobs, it will be my top priority on tribal council to get all our people who have lost their jobs over the past year back to work. A few months ago I wrote about how our casino manager, Lee Harden, has replaced many of our tribal members with non-members in positions that some of them have even held for nearly 20 years. Many of our people who have held jobs at that casino for nearly two decades are now out of work. They are hurting badly, economically and mentally. Imagine feeling secure in your life only to have your security ripped out from underneath you.

Lee is using many tactics to get rid of our tribal member workforce, including strict adherence to guidelines (my cousin was relieved from work because of a point system when she was two minutes late), drug testing, and a lack of education and this in regards to employees who have been on the job at the casino for nearly 20 years. That’s 20 years of gaining knowledge in the operations of a casino, but it didn’t count for much in Lee’s eyes.

As the workforce in the casino diminishes, the work load doesn’t. Who has to make up for these lost positions? The loyal, dedicated, hard-working employees that remain, but, as their work load increases, their pay doesn’t. They are required to pick up the slack that Lee has created, yet, as they work other people’s jobs in addition to their own, they aren’t getting paid anything extra. This is creating a disgruntled work force.

Employee morale at our casino continues to decline. Several years ago it was bad, but since we’ve come under new management, employee morale is at an all-time low.

No matter what it takes, we need to get our people back to work on this Rez. We need to quit handing out the higher paying jobs to non-tribal members. The same goes for all subcontractor jobs as well. Why do we have our college for three decades now? Why did we educate so many of our people over the years only to turn them away from working here and helping to improve our lives on the reservation? Why do we chase them away when we’ve educated them and they could have so much to offer? And, why are we firing our people who have worked for so many years at that casino? Our people shouldn’t have to drive an hour away every day to work at our competitor casinos. It’s just not right!

When I’m elected, I will spend every day working on changing our management at the casino and I won’t stop until it’s accomplished. In order to get our people back to work in that casino, the manager has to go along with the half dozen high-paying positions he created to do work he should have been doing in the first place. A half-million dollars is spent annually on high-priced executive staff at the casino. This is why he had to let go of so many of our employees who had been on the job for many, many years, in order to cover those unnecessary expenses.

We got along for over 20 years without Lee’s executive staff and we made more money without them. Fifteen years ago our casino was consistently making nearly $6 million net every year when Gosh was our chairman. About 10 years ago revenues began to decline down to $3 million net per year and it was blamed on the recession, but now we are down to $1.5 million net and what’s the excuse? We are told we’re doing great! Do you really believe that the gaming industry is suffering that bad that we are only doing 25% of what we used to do? In my opinion, the parking lot is just as full as it always has been.

New management = jobs for our people!