The Kansas Civil Service Board sent a strong message to state government this spring: If you violate the civil service rights of classified employees, there will be consequences.

The message, sent via an order stemming from a complaint filed by workers at the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services (SRS), reprimands the department for flouting employees’ due-process rights under the law during a departmental reorganization that resulted in countless reclassifications and demotions in November 2004.

The board ordered SRS to reinstate affected employees at their previous classifications, and, if their pay was cut, to restore their wages retroactively.

“In certain areas of the state, employees were forced to apply for their own jobs, and in the majority of cases, weren’t able to keep them,” says Betty Vines, president of the AFT’s Kansas Association of Public Employees (KAPE), which represents SRS professionals, including social workers. “Many were forced to take lower-paying positions. One member’s pay was cut by one-third.”

While complaints to the board must be filed by individual workers, KAPE provided the financial backing, paying upwards of $30,000 in attorney’s fees.

“There are five of us who filed with the board,” says KAPE member Joyce Resnick, who works in Topeka. “There were so many people who felt it was too risky to demand their job back and go out and do it. There are hundreds of people who are affected by the decision.”

Resnick notes that her reclassification—from a program consultant working with early childhood educators to address unmet needs in the community to child protective services investigations—was not accompanied by a pay cut. But she did lose a job she loved doing, and it was a job she had been doing for 13 years. For her, the reclassification was a step backward because it was the “same job I had 30 years ago when I started with the agency and didn’t have a master’s [degree].”

But, she notes, “a lot of people did lose money,” and others just quit their jobs or retired earlier than planned. Resnick is grateful she had a union backing her. “No one could have afforded to do this on their own.”

While the case was making its way through the board, KAPE was lobbying state legislators to take a comprehensive look at SRS’s reorganization, which began more than a year ago with regional office consolidations and county office closures. The Legislature’s audit is expected this summer.

Among SRS’s citable offenses: failing to provide employees with a written statement “setting forth the reasons and factual basis for the demotion” and failing to offer affected workers the opportunity to reply in writing or appear in person to discuss the demotion prior to its effective date.

The board noted in its decision that the purpose of the Kansas Civil Service Act, in part, is to ensure that “all personnel administration actions shall be based on merit principles and fitness to perform the work required and shall provide fair and equal opportunity for public service.”

At press time, KAPE was preparing to take legal action against the department for its refusal to reinstate employees per the board’s March 29 order.