Sisters and Brothers,
It has been a pretty busy month with all the ISP talks and I’m sure you will all be glad to know who gets to go in the next round. I will report on the ISP at the Western Unit meeting which will be held on Tuesday November 9th, 2010 and at the Northwestern Unit meeting which will be held on Thursday November 11th, 2010. If you would like to know if you got the ISP or have any questions pertaining to the ISP please come to one of the Unit meetings.
Over the last few months we have been working on a grievance review here at the Hall to see if we can clean up the back log of open grievances. We have found a bunch of open grievances for people that haven’t worked here for quite a few years and have been able to get settlement letters on those. Also, we have found a significant number of grievances that were still open even though discipline has been removed from the employees file, so we were able to settle those as well. We finally got our next Arbitration scheduled and it will be held on January 31st, 2011. Danny and I will be working together on the Termination case and I will report on it once we get the decision back from the Arbitrator.
As you all know the Largo Work Center has been sold. I met with Scott, Joe and Jim to discuss what they were going to do with the CZT II’s. Originally they wanted 4 to move to Seminole, 5 to move to Clearwater and 2 in the Gandy/ Skyway area. Everyone got their first choice until we got to the bottom 2 employees and the company was going to require them to move to Clearwater since that is where the openings were. After much discussion all of the CZT II’s were awarded their first choice. The end result will have 5 techs moving to Seminole, 3 moving to Skyway/ Gandy, and 3 moving to Clearwater.
We have the Safety Rodeo coming up on November 10th, 11th, and 12th for Outside Plant in the Upper Sun-coast. It will be held at the Largo Work Center. Please remember to clean the cabs of your trucks out and have all of your Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in a location that you are familiar with. If you don’t have some of your PPE then they will take the information down to order you the replacements immediately. I will try to be there for some of the days so I hope to see you there.
In the SRC there have been some Overtime issues with them forcing by skill-set instead of by inverse Seniority as the Contract reads in Article 5, Section 4, Paragraph 4.1. Robert, Sue and I met with Labor and Val 2 weeks ago to discuss this, Sue and I met with Val and Labor again on Thursday Nov. 4, 2010 to finish up the discussion. We believe that this issue has been resolved, but will have to wait until we have it in writing. We will update you once we have it confirmed. Also, the Day after Thanksgiving holiday bid had 105 people working and Sue, Rachel and I met with Val, Dee Dee and Cynthia to discuss this. Out of 105, only 41 people volunteered to work the holiday, both parties agreed to only have the 41 Reps that volunteered, work the Holiday. If you have any questions, please free to call me at the Hall.
I hope that you all have a safe and Happy Thanksgiving holiday and hope to see you soon.
In Solidarity,
Dan Wagner