There are a couple of items that I want to mention before we begin talking about bargaining.
Danny Alfonso and I have been reviewing termination grievances and have held several Pre-Arbs to determine if those cases will be heard in arbitration. The Arbitration that we had scheduled for June 11th was resolved when the Company made a financial offer and the grievant accepted. We have a date for September for another termination grievance already and we will continue to schedule terminations until we are caught up.
The Solidarity Day at the Trop, which was the day before we opened bargaining, was a success, with close to 200 members and their families attending. Zaida Menendez and Grace Smith are looking for volunteers to participate in a cancer walk that will take place in October and hopefully one of them will talk a little more about it under Good of the Union.
Now, let’s talk about bargaining. As you know, we met last Monday, the 28th and basically both Committees traded proposals and then briefly discussed them. During the 1st 9 days, we probably met in full Committee for less than 3 hours. This is not unusual in the beginning of the bargaining process. There have been several sub-committee meetings during the first 2 weeks regarding Common Control Scheduling and the Grievance Procedure. We updated the website with the progress that was made over those 9 days, which was not a whole lot. Now, as Dawn Livingston reminded me, in regards to those emails, we have some members that do not know what MOA or LOU means. MOA is a Memorandum of Agreement and LOU is a Letter of Understanding. There are 81 MOA’s and LOU’s currently in our Collective Bargaining Agreement. I’m going to go over what MOA’s and LOU’s your Committee has agreed to renew up to this point.
All MOA’s or LOU’s have been tentatively agreed upon to renew, with the exception of the following: Lead Rep, Force Adjustment, Dental Plan (which the Company has proposed a new MOA,) Mail Order Prescription Plan (which the Company has proposed a new MOA,) Point of Service, which details our Healthcare benefits – the Company has proposed a new MOA as well, but without any cost to the employee. Every Bargaining Session within the former GTE areas in the last 18 months, the Union was presented with a proposal to have the employee contribute to their medical benefits. This did not happen here. From initial review of this proposal last night, the changes are to the Mental Health coverage and it does not look like a decrease in benefits for the members. The Joint Healthcare Committee has not been renewed to this point either. The last 3 that have NOT been renewed as of yet include Common Control Scheduling, Professional Image and Business Attire.
Now, the Union currently has proposals that include: increasing night differential; increasing per diem; increasing meal allowances; more flexibility for the employees to use discretionary vacation days/floaters; clarification on the process to choose floaters after vacation selection has ended (and I would like to add a thank you to all the Chiefs that were contacted by your committee last week for the information on how each group bids or selects Floating Holidays. As you can probably imagine, the process is not consistent across Florida); Holidays; clarification on bereavement language; bumping; temporary assignments/180 days; grievance procedure; upgrades; contractor committee; vision plan (which the Company has a counter and our committee is still reviewing); guidelines for out of state assignments; long-term care (which the Company has a counter and our committee is still reviewing.) Now with a couple of these issues, I stated that our committee is still reviewing, and that is because we were given what we hope are the final 11 proposals from the Company late yesterday afternoon.
Now, what the Company has on the table is as follows:
Lead Rep, to basically allow any group that wants to utilize Lead Rep to do so; they would like to modify the Force Adjustment – CZT II and Cable Splicer, more affectionately referred to as the B is a B letter; change the way vacation is gained from earned as it is now, to an accrual system; to include CZT II’s and BZT’s and even COEI in the Business Attire MOA, to wear Verizon branded shirts; have all employees in the CSSC work under the Comp system; increase LTD from 12 to 18 months; end vacation banking, beginning in January 2011 (currently there are 254 employees who utilize vacation banking); reduce the Company contribution for all new or rehires for Retiree Medical Benefits (unfortunately, as I reported in January, we are the last Verizon property, including the East, that has not reduced this benefit.)
So, as you can see, there are some BIG sticking points for us with some of the Company’s proposals. Based on the surveys that the members provided, we are looking to keep the benefits that we currently have, continue with our Lump Sum and Pension benefits and get a fair general wage increase. We would like to begin to resolve our grievance procedure because we all know our process is broken. It has been broken for years and something has to be done to ensure our members and management that we when file a grievance, there is a real issue that needs to be addressed. We cannot continue to have 1500-2000 grievances filed each year.
Also, there have been some preliminary discussions about an enhanced ISP offer. We believe that if or when the Company declares a surplus, there will be an offer made that is consistent with the offer made to Texas last month when a surplus was declared there. We don’t believe that a surplus will be announced in Florida before September, which is a very good thing for employees that may be affected even though I know there are a few members waiting for an offer so they can retire. We are not aware of what classifications may be affected by a surplus or how many employees could be affected. We will do everything we can to ensure that ALL employees are offered an Incentive and then do all we can to have management actually allow employees in areas that are not affected be allowed to accept as well.
We need to continue to show solidarity among the membership by wearing red on Thursday and black on Friday. I’m sure as we progress through this process, if things do not go smoothly, we will be calling on all members for assistance. Remember, this is your contract; this is your Union!
In Solidarity,
Robert
