John Glye

Brothers & Sisters:

In December, FNFT's couldn't get any time off unless they had a vacation scheduled. In January, they can't find enough work to keep them busy for an eight hour tour. Orders have dropped off significantly, so were back to moving FNFT's over to copper, on loan to other areas, etc. Hopefully the activity picks back up in February.

In the EVRC Robert, J.P., and I met with Amy and Aaron to discuss the FSC training for 2012. They are planning on starting a class soon with a maximum of 20 in the training. I've gotten some calls on the rumor that the EVRC was closing, and both Amy and Aaron said that wasn't true. There is no date at this time, and neither one believes it will be anytime soon.

We have a new ACOM in Eastern; Kim Wiley has taken over the CZTII/FNFT groups from Ron Corgan. The Chiefs and I have met with her, and I believe Kim will work with the Union to continue to make improvements in Eastern.

Kim's replacement in the DRC is Geoff Chisolm. Carrie and I met with Geoff to discuss the plans on combining the Copper and FIOS dispatchers into one group. The plan is to also include Expedite. Geoff will get back with us once he has finalized the plan for training. We also had discussions on the best possible way to keep FNFT's at 50% Saturday coverage. As of the end of January, we are still discussing this issue.

Last but not least, Wayne, Marty, and I met with Steve Glogowski to discuss the Broadband/Central Office workgroups in Tampa. We discussed multiple issues for both workgroups including schedules, training, tools, managers, etc. The big surprise was that the company is planning on conducting a pilot program for the Tampa North C.O. techs, and that at the conclusion of the pilot, the company will be collapsing the COMG workgroup back into the Central Office workgroup. We will meet again at a late date to discuss in greater detail.

In Solidarity,

John Glye Jr.

Brothers & Sisters:

At West Side, the Dispatch & Transition Specialist group has been in training for approx. 4 weeks and so far it's going well. I talked with Jim Welford and he expects to have Instructors on the property for at least 6 months. Having the Instructors teaching the class and being on the floor helping out with the "On the job training" has been beneficial, and much better than when the NDC/CPE groups were combined last year.

FNFT's continue with heavy volumes of work in Tampa. The hardest hit areas right now are in Tampa Central. Even if you are scheduled off for the weekend, the company usually requires the entire area to work Saturday. I've spoken with Kwame and Audrey and we appear to be on track with getting some additional head count in Tampa Central to provide some relief from the required O.T

Between Road Jobs and Fluid, most Cable Splicer's are busy in Tampa and Eastern division. I'm still waiting for Kwame to give me some news on his plans for T&P, it still appears he plans to move some Cable Splicer's over into the T&P workgroup permanently. When I get more information I will share it with the Chiefs.

In The EVRC we have issues...Robert and I are scheduling a meeting with Patti Barry to discuss the problems in the EVRC and can hopefully fix these problems before this gets out of hand.

In Solidarity,

John Glye Jr.

Brothers & Sisters:

In June, the company force adjusted 13 FNFT's from Eastern Division to Tampa. This of course led to required overtime for the Eastern FNFT's, and more travel time to cover orders/repair tickets throughout the entire Eastern Division. Robert and I scheduled a meeting with Ron Corgan who was taking over as the ACOM for Eastern Division and we came to an agreement to recall 3 FNFT's. The 3 employees will be brought back to Eastern Division during the week of September 4th, 2011. Hopefully the order activity will continue to increase in the Eastern Division and we can bring the 10 remaining techs back.

Speaking of Eastern Division, Robert and I have held several meetings with both the CZT II's and Ron Corgan to discuss the O.T. issues for repair and have hopefully come up with some solutions to better equalize the overtime.

For approx. 5 years, the company has been giving "damaged cables" to the Cable Splicer's instead of the CZT II's. This work has traditionally been performed by repair in the past and Kwame has agreed to give the work back to CZT II's.

The big news of the month was the upgrade for the NDC/RCMAC workgroups. Not only did this bring in more work to Florida but we were successful in getting a wage increase for both groups. They will now become one group under the new title of Dispatch & Transition Specialist. Training will begin in August on both day and night tours.

Finally, after being out of work for more than 5 months, Chrissy Baker is back in action!!! Welcome back Chrissy, you're irreplaceable and I'm very fortunate to have you as the Chief in the EVRC.

In Solidarity,

John Glye Jr.

Brothers & Sisters:

So much for FNFT's in Eastern Division going on loan for 180 days to Tampa. It only lasted a couple of weeks before the company declared a surplus in Eastern and is now moving 13 FNFT's permanently to Tampa. They had originally planned to move 15, but after 42 days of "evaluating" the surplus, they reduced the amount to 13. It appears that only one tech will volunteer and 12 will be required. The company stated that the level of order activity in Eastern is too low for the existing headcount and the company needed to move these techs. They plan on increasing the size of the MDU groups in Tampa now that the headcount has increased with the additional FNFT's from Eastern.

The company has moved the EVRC to the 5th floor in the Main building. This was announced at the beginning of the year, but has taken almost 6 months for the move to occur. We're still having issues with flexibility in the EVRC, but we have been able to keep the offline work even with the headcount down to approx. 63 Reps.

The company seems to have "ramped up" investigations over time fraud. I'd like to remind everyone that if you're paid for 8 hours, make sure you worked for 8 hours. The company treats time fraud investigations very serious, and discipline is certain if the employee reported their time fraudulently.

Please remember to keep Safety a priority when working outside. Its summer and that means lots of rain and an increase in heat related incidents.  Look forward to see everyone at the General and Unit meetings.

In Solidarity,

John Glye Jr.

Brothers & Sisters:

I have good news for our BZT I's; the Company is finally training the Key/PBX techs on Avaya products. We have been battling with the company for several years as to what defined a voice or data product. I feel we are now moving in the right direction with this training, and hope to report more news on this in the upcoming months.

Buried drop has a new Acom and with that comes more worries. GPS is now being installed on the vehicles and techs are constantly being questioned on their work activities. I will again remind the techs, "eight hours work for eight hours pay". If you're doing your job, the questions will eventually stop.  The company is also hiring a couple of techs for Buried drop at the Causeway location.  I'd also like to thank Jamie Rivera in Airport North for stepping up to become a Steward for Buried Drop. Jamie recently attended a Stewards training class and is eager to get more involved and help out.

We've had several investigations in the MCO during the month of April. It appears that management has become more aggressive in documenting personal time, tardiness, etc. Please be aware of this, and make sure to ask for a Steward if your manager wants to discuss any of you work activities. Members are becoming too comfortable with sitting down with management without a Steward.

Due to FNFT's in Southern Division transferring up to Tampa permanently, we were able to move approx. 6 Tampa FNFT's to locations that were closer to home for them. The company is also doing a "canvas of interest" in Tampa to see who else would like to move to a different location and we might have some more moves in the near future.

We had another group of Eastern FNFT's placed on loan to the Southern Division in April. We were able to correct the "weekends off" issue and no one was required for this assignment. We still have several FNFT's on loan to the University area as well.

In Solidarity,

John Glye Jr.

Brothers & Sisters:

In March we continued to meet with Glen Roy on the Overtime Rosters. They are improving but the company still has a long way to go before they are meeting the contractual language on equalization of overtime. In most areas, the lack of refused hours is what's causing the biggest discrepancies with the rosters.

In most Central Offices and Work Centers, the company has been going around and looking at ways to "clean up". It appears that the company is becoming very restrictive in allowing employees personal items at their work locations, vehicles, etc. Please make sure you do NOT have anything inappropriate with you at work. Also, if a manager asks you to dispose of company property, please call the hall before you do so.

I recently spent the afternoon at the "War Room" over at the Brandon work center to see how that was coming along.  It's only been in place for two weeks but so far they have identified several problems with how orders written incorrectly can create problems with the buried drops not being placed. They are now looking into how to correct these issues and then roll out the corrections companywide.

I met again with the Company and Chiefs for Broadband to discuss the combining of Installation and Repair. The company shared with us their plan for the schedules and training. They have a timeline set for "On the job training" and also showed us a mock schedule with how the lay days and tours would look. Most of this training will start to occur in April. If you have any questions please ask your Chiefs or call the Hall.

In Solidarity,

John Glye Jr.

Brothers & Sisters:

In February I was able to meet with both Kim and Lisa in the DRC. They just took over in January and are just starting to get a feel for things. The meeting went well and I think we can work together on improving tours, schedules, etc.

I also attended a meeting with Glenroy Barrow in the DRC on equalization of the O.T. rosters for the FNFT's. We covered where we are at with the first 6 weeks of the year and what he plans to do with the areas that are not being equalized properly. The first few weeks of the New Year, overtime is offered by seniority, which makes it hard to get a true reflection of how the rosters are being equalized. Every two weeks he will be sending out the copies of each roster so we can look them over and verify that the company is equalizing the rosters.

At the West Side location, Belinda Chesser has volunteered and been appointed to become the Chief Steward for NDC, RCMAC, and APC. Belinda was a Steward in the EVRC and also over at 301 before they were relocated to West Side.  This should help reduce some of the workload for Wayne and I know he will help her out anytime she needs it. We also have Brian at West Side for the FNFT's so I think we finally have Chiefs covering all of the different departments and tours at West Side.

At the end of the month the staff met with Jeanmarie Milla about some of the ongoing issues with FIOS. She informed us that she is putting together a team to establish a "war room" at the Brandon work center for approx. 10 weeks to see if they can identify and fix some of the issues. The plan is to start this around the 2nd week of March. Hopefully this study will finally produce some fixes for drops missing, orders incorrect, etc. and new policies and procedures can be rolled out to all of the areas once the corrections are made.

We still have a lot to work on with the Verizon Business techs coming into our contract and I hope to have some details to share with everyone next month.

In Solidarity,

John Glye Jr.

Brothers & Sisters:

January is in the books and outside of FIOS activity starting out with requirements in all areas it has been quiet for the last two weeks in regards to requiring FNFT's on lay days and past their tours. I know the FNFT's are enjoying the break, but hopefully the order activity doesn't fall off so much that we are back to doing Net learn in the afternoons.

EVRC is having problems with consecutive lay days on the schedule and I have a meeting scheduled with RMG and Chrissy in the first week of February to see if we can improve the schedules. We will also be discussing the "flex policy" for the EVRC.

DRC has two new ACOM's for Copper and Fios. Kim will be in charge of Copper, and Lisa is in charge of the Fios. I look forward to working with both Lisa and Kim and have a meeting scheduled with Lisa in February. I've worked with Kim in the past and I'm sure that together we can make some improvements with the DRC.

NDC and CPE are resuming cross training in January and the plan is to start with the employees on the late shifts where they have less support than the day tours.

COMG in the Eastern area is being collapsed back into the Central Office work group. I've had several meetings with the ACOM and the Chief in Eastern, and hopefully together we make this as painless as possible. One of the biggest concerns is training and Steve has Sharon putting together a schedule for training that should start in February. Most of the training initially will be for "power maintenance". Steve assured me that everyone would be given the proper training before doing any of the maintenance work with the batteries, rectifiers, etc.

In Solidarity,

John Glye Jr.

Brothers & Sisters:

November was the month that the Company decided on no overtime…well it didn't last for long in some departments. December was work as much as you want in FIOS, most of it was actually required. The Company decided to try and add as many customers as they could in the last three weeks of 2010 and FIOS activity in Tampa was more than we could handle. Eastern FIOS techs were coming over daily in an effort to help with the order activity.

Manhattan work center has finally closed and the techs are now reporting to WestSide.

MDU Liaisons positions had to be canvassed again due to the Company making some changes to the responsibilities for that position. The Company has decided that the MDU Liaisons will be responsible for both repair/orders on FIOS business customers instead of just pre fields for FIOS business.

Robert and I met with Jim Welford about the RCMAC vacations and he agreed to open up more than 120 days from September - December 2011.

I hope that all of the Stewards are reminding the managers in their departments the contractual language on the selection of Floating Holidays immediately after the full weeks have been selected. The sooner we start that process, the better it will be later in the year in reducing the amount of Floaters that are denied due to the "needs of the business".

I hope everyone enjoyed the Holidays and I look forward to seeing everyone at the Meetings.

In Solidarity,

John Glye Jr.

Brothers & Sisters:

Glad November is behind us!! It was insanity with everything that was going on with the company. FNFT's have gone from required six days, to now they can't work any overtime due to the company trying to save money. This happens every year as most departments are over budget and overtime is the first expense they try to cut back on. In some yards the company has required FNFT's but didn't require those that were approaching 56 hours for the week. This is a violation of the CBA and I feel that we have resolved this issue with the company. If you're still having problems in your yard please contact the hall so we can get it fixed.

The company notified the Union that they are finally placing the MDU Liasons on their own schedules starting in December. This was agreed upon during bargaining and the yards were canvassed for volunteers back in the September/October timeframe.

We were also informed that the company is closing the Airport South work center and relocating all of the technicians to Westside. The company plans on making the move in December.

The company is now in the process of reducing the head count for Cable Splicer's. It appears that after the canvas for volunteers, the company will be forcing 9 Cable Splicer's into the CZT II title in the Eastern Division. It would have been more than 20, but the company did allow 10 FNFT's to volunteer to return to the CZT II title.  In Tampa they needed 11 volunteers and it appears they will get enough volunteers. The company also plans on relocating some Cable Splicer's from University to the Ybor work center.

I'd like to remind everyone to remember that Safety is our number one priority. An employee in the Eastern Division was involved in a very serious auto accident last week and remains hospitalized, so please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, Christmas is just around the corner.

In Solidarity,

John Glye Jr.