I have a meeting next week with Jeanmarie and her staff that is in charge of placing discounts for Verizon services, and as I reported last month, I believe Verizon will be offering Union member discounts for FIOS and HSI shortly. It probably will not be a huge savings, but will offer all union members a discount on their communication services. When this discount gets final approval, our Local will be doing a mail-out to all the Unions that make up our Central Labor Council. We want every union member in our jurisdiction, IBEW or otherwise, to know that by supporting Verizon, they are supporting their Union sisters and brothers.
We are in the process of finding out exactly what job duties our Jeop desk members are performing. Over the last year and a half, more functions are being performed, including dispatch work, CSSC work, BSC work, FSC work, and a few others. Originally, the Jeop desk was a place where members went to help out when they were injured on the job. Kind of like a light duty position. Since last November, we keep hearing that the Jeop desk may go away, probably to Texas, and we do not want that to happen. If the Company wants to utilize different employees from different classifications in the Jeop desk, we can work that out and perhaps create a new work group. We have another meeting next week and we will report further once we know what the plans are.
Now, I want to provide some information on how so many members received their ballots back, stating return to sender. The renewal slip for our post office box has not been sent to the hall, but rather just placed in the box itself. Payment was received by the post office prior to the ballots being mailed out, but the St. Pete processing center, which seems to sort almost everyone’s mail now, wasn’t notified of the payment so therefore started returning mail with information saying our post office box wasn’t valid. Bobby Bellot, the Election Judge spoke with the Postmaster and everything was supposed to be ok, but it seems like it took 48 hours for the issue to finally get resolved. Bobby will check our post office box on a quarterly basis from here on out, so we should not run into this issue again.
As everyone probably knows already, we conducted meetings all last week, including one last Friday morning for any member that works a later shift, to discuss the Tentative Agreement. I will go through the items that are new or have changed again this evening, so that everyone is clear and understands the issues that are being voted on. Your Bargaining Committee is here tonight and will be glad to answer any questions you may have after the meeting has concluded. I will, as I always do, stay until all questions are answered as well.
A few members have asked why did we reach agreement before the expiration of the current agreement. In 1993, we reached agreement at or before the expiration and in 2002, if you can remember, we reached agreement long before the expiration. We believe there was much to risk, from both sides, to not come up with a fair agreement before the expiration. Larger issues from the Company, like the B is a B letter and Mandatory Comp for the CSSC and employee contributions for medical coverage, also issues the Union had on the table, like decreasing the hours to reach double-time or increasing night differential or increasing Holidays were not going to be attainable by either side. To reach a fair agreement, the Company didn’t press their issues and neither did the Union. Your Committee believes this is a fair agreement and is asking for your support.
Now, before I begin going through the changes, I want to point out that we have had a couple members request a copy of the tentative agreement or for us to place the tentative agreement on the internet. The committee had copies at all the meetings we held last week, and they were available to view at that time. There are several copies here tonight, if you would like to read through them. We have never mailed out copies of a tentative agreement before and are under no obligation to incur the cost to our members that we would if we mailed them out.
Ok, so let’s go through the handouts that you picked up on the way in tonight. New-Hire Orientation was an MOA in the current CBA and now it is being moved to language and will reside in Article II, Section 1, paragraph 1.5.1. Same page, at the bottom talks about the changes for Union Officer excusals and the amount of days they can be excused. Next page should show the increase of per diem from $35 to $37.50. The bottom of that page shows the meal allowance changing from $6 to $7.25
Next page shows the clarification in our bereavement language. We have had questions on this forever and hopefully this will clear it up for every member. Basically, it says the same thing it always has, but clarifies that a relative not described in the first paragraph MUST live in the same establishment as you for you to receive benefits. At the bottom of that page, it included Verizon Enterprise Delivery, formerly Verizon Select Services, for the bump in per diem to $37.50 per day, just like the Core Agreement.
The next page is the MOA on vacation banking. This shows that banking will be discontinued effective January 1, 2011, but any weeks currently banked will not be lost and will stay in the bank for you to use in the future or keep until you retire. Those are the changes to the contract language and now I will go through the information that we provided at the meetings last week.
We will be voting on a new 3-year agreement that will run from August 1, 2010 through July 27, 2013. Our Dental Plan benefits will not change, but there will be a cost for family coverage. Currently the Company pays 100% of the premium for employee + family and with the change, the Company will pay 100% for employee and 80% for family. Frank Franzen did the research and the cost for family coverage will be approximately $13 per month. Now, about 10 years ago, we were able to join a Union Dental program that cut our costs for dental work more than half. We currently only have one dentist left, and he is in Tampa. Danny Alfonso and I are again trying to get more dentists back into this program and will have a meeting soon to discuss our options. What the administrators are asking us to do is find out how many members are interested, so they can actively pursue more dentists. If you are interested, you can go to our website and choose Member Resources/Forms on the left menu and click on the Union Dental link. Once you do that, you will see a short list of the costs for us to have certain dental procedures done. Again, if that interests you, please contact your Rep at the Hall so we can give this info to the Union Dental Company and hopefully that will get us more dentists, in all of our areas. By participating in this dental program, you will more than make up the $13 or so a month your family coverage would cost. This program is a UNION MEMBER ONLY benefit and you must show an IBEW 824 membership card to get these benefits. Again, this is a UNION Member benefit and not a benefit provided for by Verizon. To be eligible for these discounts, you must choose Verizon Dental (Metlife Dental) and not the DMO provided by Verizon, when you make your benefits selections later this year.
Next we’ll talk about upgrades. The NDC and the Expedite Group in Temple Terrace will both be upgraded. The NDC Dispatch Clerks are going from D to C-1. They will be merging with the CPE Dispatch Clerks on 301 and they now reside at the Westside location in Tampa. The employees in the Expedite Group were and have been performing the job duties that Dispatch Clerks perform and so they were moved from Wage Schedule F to D.
The Lead Rep MOA in the current CBA was altered to include only the following classifications – CSSC, SRC, and FSC. The only change was to include the FSC. Next, the Business Attire MOA will include ALL customer-facing employees and they will be eligible for the $240 first-year allowance and $180 allowance each year thereafter. (The Cable Splicer classification is NOT included for this MOA.)
The Common Control Scheduling MOA was altered to include the FSC. No other changes to that MOA.
A Contractor Committee MOA, which is new for us, will be added to the CBA. This MOA states that the Union and Company will meet biannually, or immediately after a surplus has been declared, for the purpose of discussing and locating contractors that are performing our work. This is a big issue for the Union and will help us with the knowledge of where contractors are and what work they are performing.
Domestic Partner Benefits changed to include FML entitlement for the care of a seriously ill domestic partner. That was the only change to that MOA. Long-Term Care is another new benefit that we do not have now. This will benefit members who have a family member in a nursing home or has a family member taken care of in their home. This will be a benefit that you will decide if you need it or not when you select the rest of your benefits on an annual basis. There will be a cost, based on what you choose, just like LTD or Life Insurance. Long-Term Disability coverage will increase from 12 months to 18 months.
Pension Plan – Pension Minimums, located in your current CBA on page 149 were increased on the low end from $300 to the high end of $800. These are the caps and apply to members that begin their service with Verizon later in life and will not reach 30 years with the Company. The Point of Service Medical Plan, although there is no premiums contribution from the employees, does have 2 changes. Currently there is no out-of-network coverage for Substance Abuse or Mental Health. Now, there will be at the rate of 70/30. Those are the only changes to our medical benefits! The VEBA benefits, which are our Retiree Healthcare benefits, will change for new or rehires, effective with this agreement. Any new or rehire, upon 30 years of service, will receive $345 per year, up to 30 years of service. No changes for current employees.
The Verizon Business Transition is a big change for our local. I will start by telling you that we had a proposal to bring this work plus the employees into the bargaining agreement. After many days talking about this work, the only way the Company would agree to bring this work union, was to have those employees bring their seniority with them and protect them from a force adjustment or layoff for a period of 18 months. That was the bottom line to acquiring this work. Now, Verizon Business has been taking our work for several years, with the Company’s knowledge. The dilemma your committee had was do we say no to bringing this work in under these conditions, and continue to lose our work, or do we make this part of the package and let the members decide? If we say NO, more work will disappear, and with that more jobs. Every member that the Committee or I have talked to over the last week agree that we need this work in our bargaining agreement. No one likes the way it is coming in, but the alternative is worse. As we have said all week, this is a very important issue and it needed to be brought out to the membership, explained, and let the members decide for themselves. That is what we have done and you will decide by your vote. I will say that this involves 75 employees falling under the bargaining agreement, and those employees are already contacting the hall to join our local. There are 23 employees located in our franchise area and the rest are scattered around the state. We will be having new-hire orientation meetings with these employees, if this agreement is ratified.
The transition of the Video Head-End work coming into the bargaining agreement came with the same caveats, seniority and protection. Again, this is not the way we wanted this work, but it is for the members to decide, not the committee. This group consists of approximately 12 employees.
The Team Performance Award, or TPA is unchanged and will continue at the 4% maximum. The last item, I believe, is the Voluntary Termination Bonus, which consist of a $10,000 bonus if you are offered, accept and leave the Company under an ISP offer. This will be in the agreement and is not a one-time offer.
Now, for what some of you have been waiting for, I will talk about the one-time ISP offer that will be offered after the ratification of this agreement. The reason it won’t be offered unless the agreement is ratified is because the Company has stated that they will not declare a surplus while we are in bargaining. If the contract is not ratified, we would have to go back to the table and any offer would be delayed. The Company informed me for several months, that we would only receive an offer when a surplus was declared. We believe a surplus will be declared shortly after ratification. The offer will be the same as it was in Texas, which gives a one-time supplement of $40,000, in addition to the $10,000 Bonus that I spoke of a few minutes ago, to total $50,000 plus the $1100 per year up to 30 years we currently have in our ISP will be increased to cap at 40 years. That equates to an additional $61,000 for a member to leave the Company. In addition, if a member, who is not pension eligible by having 30 years or 76 points, elects to leave they will have their medical benefits continue to be paid by the Company for a period of 6 months. Also, the pension plan will be amended such that being under the age of 55 will not penalize Service Pension eligible employees who leave. Currently, if you do not have 30 years of service, but have 76 points, you would be penalized 3% each year, under 30 years of service. This will not apply under this one-time offer.
Thank you for your attention and have a great weekend.
In Solidarity,
Robert