I want to start off with the Company’s surplus announcement for the first quarter in the Florida region. We had been hearing numbers of 200-350 employees, throughout many classifications, and that these numbers would be mostly accomplished with voluntary separations. As you should already know, our number in Florida was 1 General Clerk, within the Verizon Plus stores in Tampa. That is good news for us, but I do not want to make light of even 1 member having to enter the bumping process or being laid off. Fortunately, there is 1 General Clerk that does want to leave and is taking the ISP so no other member will be affected by this surplus. That is GREAT news for our members!
As for the 4th quarter surplus/bumping, it is finally complete. We were given the information last Thursday to verify all the bumps were correct and after we studied the information, it looks like it was done contractually. We did have one member inquire as to why she did not get her first choice, and after checking, reported back to the member that her first choice was actually in a higher wage schedule. So, as I report this month, we have gone through 2 very laborious bumping processes from the 3rd and 4th quarter of 2009 where the Company followed the contract. All the employees involved in the 4th quarter bump have reported to their new locations this week and to our knowledge, there are no outstanding issues.
We were just advised this afternoon that the Company will be canvassing Eastern, Upper Suncoast and Tampa Core splicers to go to West Virginia on a temporary assignment, until the end of April. We still do not have enough work for Splicers and this will hopefully keep us off the radar. The Company will not be asking for volunteers from Southern because they say they have 80 work orders in progress and if they allowed Splicers from Southern to go, they would probably have to utilize contractors and they do not want to do that for this work.
During the last month, I have been speaking with Myles Calvey, who is our TCC II Chairman. He told me about a conversation between himself and Verizon Labor Relations, that centered on a possible incentive that would be greater than either our ISP or other local’s that have a double ISP. Myles stated that the Company seemed interested because they would like to have pension eligible employees be able to leave and actually retire so we didn’t have to continue to lay off employees. Myles also stated that for the Union to seriously talk about an incentive for the membership, they would also have to include a guarantee of no layoffs for a certain period of time. I have spoken with Rick Carpenter and requested a meeting with the same Labor Relations people from New York. This evening I was talking to the President of the CWA Local in Texas and he told me that Trinidad is aware of a possible meeting discussing the incentive as well. The Northeast Locals, including the CWA Locals and IBEW 827 have a tentative meeting next week to discuss the options. Myles told me he would let me know the details after the meeting is over. It is possible that we may have a meeting that includes Texas and California, which make up Verizon West. We don’t know if anything will come of this, but Trinidad started telling techs in Texas about a possibility this afternoon, so even though this will make the Chiefs and the Union Hall’s phones ring off the hook next week, I wanted to let our membership know what we know.
If you haven’t heard, Verizon notified the CWA in New York that they have declared a surplus of 3938 positions within 39 different job titles across the state. I asked John to get some more information for me to report and what we know right now is that there will be a 15 day volunteer period, but we do not know the dates for that or what the off-property date is going to be. The Company is trying to reduce headcount without losing the qualified employees to continue business as usual. I have been keeping in touch with IBEW Business Managers around the country to see what is going on in regards to surplus announcements and the availability for Florida to receive more jobs and more importantly, to keep the jobs we have now.
I have an update on the EVRC Reps that were in the 13-day boot camp to prepare for the FSC test. 39 employees were in the first class and all of them passed the written test at the end of that training segment. 4 out of the 39 were not successful in the structured interview portion, which I just found out about last night. We will be addressing this with the Company to find out how an employee can be good enough to deal with customers who are on our Copper network, but not be able to deal with customers on the Fiber network.
Now, regarding the new attendance policy that the Company put into effect this week, the Union has filed a grievance regarding the way the Company intends to discipline employees as it relates to their attendance and occasions. As everyone should know, the Company has the ability under Article II, Section 1, paragraph 1.4 to “administer work standards and performance requirements.” What the Union is asking for is to not have a standard, automatic step of discipline ready as soon as an employee exceeds the objective. In addition we are requesting the Company and the Union talk about the issues in certain work locations where attendance is high, to work together to help everyone understand the importance of coming to work when you are able to do so. We believe that in certain work locations, the manner in which employees are treated correlate to a higher rate of absenteeism. This applies mainly to the employees who work in Inside Plant. Hopefully, we can report some progress on this issue at the meeting next month or through our web site if something occurs sooner.
We are close to 1000 members signed up to receive updates from our website and I want to report that we have begun to send emails to specific work groups and classifications that talk about issues specific to that work group. If you are in the SRC or the CSSC, or you are an FNFT or a CZT II, you have received an update within the past 2 weeks. When one of the Reps or myself attends a meeting that deals solely with a particular work group, we are advising all members what was discussed during the meeting, through these emails. Since we began this, we have had numerous members email or call us to tell us they think that is a great thing. We know that we cannot personally talk to every member after every meeting, whether you’re a steward or a Business Manager, but we can communicate with any member that is signed up to receive updates. I’m really happy with the responses we have been receiving and I hope it continues, especially once we enter bargaining. If there is any Chief that wants to make sure an important message gets to all the members in their work groups, let us know and we will send it to them.
I have a brief report on the arbitrations that have been scheduled in 2010. We were to hear a termination on February 24th, but the Company made an offer to the grievant that was accepted by her. Our next arbitration will be on April 21st, which involves a language issue and then we have another termination on April 29th. We are currently reviewing termination grievances from 2009 and will be submitting several for arbitration shortly. As for grievances, we are reviewing them from the oldest to the most current, that have been through 3rd step and are just sitting in a file waiting on a decision to arbitrate or withdraw. I reported several months ago, there are quite a few outstanding and we are reviewing the grievances and beginning to talk to the Chiefs that filed them, if they haven’t retired, and will use some of these outstanding issues to form proposals in bargaining. I do not foresee any other language issues being arbitrated before we begin bargaining. As I said, we will see what issues are recurring over and over again and try to resolve those issues at the table, if possible.
As for the Safety policy the Company wants to implement, we have met a couple more times in the last month and will continue to talk this month. I want to thank all of the Chief Stewards who provided us with information regarding workplace safety meetings and who was the Company or Union safety person in their areas. We continue to tell the Company that we believe wholeheartedly in safety and want to work with the Company to ensure that every member has the tools and/or knowledge to perform their job safely. We do not need the threat of some form of discipline to work safely. We will also keep you informed as these talks progress.
I reported a little on the Verizon/Frontier sale last month and I do not have much more to report this evening. I did attend a meeting with the IBEW local unions that are going to become Frontier to discuss the differences in wages and benefits and general working conditions. Fortunately, every local union has a successorship clause, which means, among other things, that simply changing names of the Company cannot change their benefits. These local unions were meeting with representatives from Verizon and Frontier this week in Baltimore and I do not know the results of that meeting right now. Our local will continue to be involved in this sale process and hopefully we can help our brothers and sisters around the country in the future if the need us to help. As for the calls we have received over the last month in regards to Frontier moving into the City Center or work orders with Frontier’s name on them, we are NOT currently being sold to Frontier. I have spoken with upper level management and to the IBEW Telecommunications Department and there is no proposed sale. As we can see with the sale that is going on now, it takes well over a year to go through this process. If I ever hear that we are being sold, or that there are serious talks about selling Florida to another company, you will be advised. There is nothing to hide if in fact this was to occur.
Our Bargaining Committee did meet last month to review the surveys that were returned and to start some preliminary work on issues that may become proposals. During the month of March and beyond, sub-committees will be meeting to do a lot of research work on many different issues that are important to our membership. I do want to say that if you have NOT returned your survey yet, please do so. We have a lot of very smart members and even though we have a very competent and experienced Committee, we still want every idea or suggestion that you may have.
Our Solidarity Committee is meeting again next week to work on our next event and we will report on that next month or start reporting on the website if we have an event planned before the next General Meeting.
Our Overtime Committee has met several times in the last month and will be meeting again next week. We still have some issues out there regarding mainly how refused overtime is recorded, if at all, and also some jurisdictional issues in several Tampa yards. Chiefs will be a part of this process and we will report through the website as well.
Finally, I want to talk about some opportunities that we have not had in Florida for quite a while. I started this report with information about the surplus conditions we’ve had over the last 6 months. I want to end the report with good news for our members. We are the only local that is increasing headcount in our next to highest wage schedule. We were notified during the last month that we would be taking on the Circuit Provisioning work from California in our BRPC downtown Tampa. This placed 10 wage schedule A positions up for bid last week. We also received 5 Business Response Representatives, wage schedule E in the same center. The 5 E positions will not be up for bid because they became available during this last bump and that saved 5 employees from bumping someone else. Then we were notified that the MCO in Tampa would be getting the work now being performed in California, which would add an additional 14 wage schedule A positions for our members. The 14 positions in the MCO will be filled by the seven Generalist who currently work in that department, upon completing the necessary tests and the other 7 will be posted for bid by our membership. When I look around the country and talk with other local unions, for IBEW Local 824 to increase headcount in wage schedule A, that means something. I believe we are working hard to ensure our members have jobs and have an opportunity to advance into a higher wage schedule and learn something new that can keep them valuable in the workplace. We will continue to seek out any work and bring it to Florida. The number one issue to our members, based on the responses from the surveys we received so far was job security. The more work we can bring in, the more security our members have.
In Solidarity,
Robert
