Wayne Strnad provides City of Chicago Personnel Rules so the community and business concerns can see what employees must comply with.

When a person is hired to work for the City of Chicago, they are suppose to be given a document that is called the Personnel Rules.  Essentially this document is suppose to tell the employee what it is that they are directly responsible for, irrespective of union contracts.  It is a document that is used against workers when they are written up for some infraction specified in the Personnel Rules.  Wayne Strnad discovered that one of the problems is that the employees never receives a copy of the personnel rules.  Yes, you read that correctly.  The community and business concerns never even know about this type of information, despite the fact that the taxpayers pay for it.

There are reasons for this, least of which is an administrative personnel who makes up their own rules that the worker is supposed to abide in, or else, get written up for something that the worker never knew existed.  In other words, when you are hired by the city you are left in the dark about what the "real" rules are and what unwritten rules are enforced.  That's all you do know is that your clout is sometimes there to protect you, should the need arise.

Then, as you might imagine, things get better.  In theory, the union is suppose to protect its workers interest.  Well, sort of.  When a person is hired by the city, there is a probation period.  It's usually 6 months.  During that period the person is though of as being seasonal.  After the six month period the person is suppose to be "turned over" which means that they are suppose to become "career service."  Fact is, there are people that have been working in a position for more than a decade that were never turned over to career service.  This is a violation of what appears in the Personnel Rules and a violation of union contract.  However, the union does nothing about it and you can believe that the city will ignore all of it.

During this period, you as an employee, pay your union dues but are not afforded the luxury of representation, should you be written up.  The term written up means that you are given a piece of paper which lists one or more infractions of the Personnel Rules.

Finally, very few city employees have a copy of the Personnel Rules.  They periodically change and the city is quite coy in making sure there are no dates that appear on the cover page of the document.  This allows for the manipulation of contents within the document, should the need arise like explaining something before a labor board.

When you download the document, you will see Appendex D appear at the bottom of the page.  This document was presented for a case brought forth in the 7th District Federal Court.  It is one version of the Personnel Rules but it is not the only version.