Other Civil Service Information

Employee Grievance Process

All employees have access to a an established grievance process.  Many agencies have their own process in place and available to employees.   For those agencies that do not have their own grievance process, the agency must use must use the grievance process prescribed in the Civil Service Handbook. 

The grievance process an internal process designed to handle those issues that cannot be appealed to the Civil Service Commission.

There are certain limitations on the use of the grievance process:

• It is not used when an employee is not satisfied with his performance evaluation; there is a separate process for this described under “PPR- Employee Request for Review”.

• It is not used when an employee disagrees with a letter of warning, counseling or reprimand.  In these cases, the employee’s recourse is to file a written response, which is required to be maintained in the employee’s file with the letter of warning, counseling or reprimand.

• It should not be used in those cases where an appeal to the Civil Service Commission is the appropriate action.  If there is a question about which procedure is the appropriate one to use, employees are urged to contact their Human Resources Office for assistance.

Employees faced with a situation that they believe might be a grievance are urged to seek the advice of their Human Resource Office to be sure that the situation is not one that should be handled instead through the Civil Service appeal process.  Each process has time limits, and if an employee proceeds through the steps of a process that is not the correct one, the employee may find that his/her time limits for initiating the other process has expired.  

To find out more about the grievance process, contact your Human Resources office.