May 29th Bargaining Report

Twenty-nine Union members attended ODOT Coalition Union Contract bargaining on May 29. We were especially pleased to have with us ODOT East Portland Bridge Crew members and the group of ODOT Union member-participants who show up faithfully and help us focus our efforts. We were also pleased to have with us Ron McGee, a mediator. Ron will be with us through negotiations.

We began negotiations by talking about the travel policy. The Union members from ODOT led a strong back-and-forth with Tom Perry, the lead State negotiator, and detailed how it is that funds available under the travel policy cannot be stretched to cover legitimate costs of traveling for night shift workers called out of town during the summer months.

We also briefly discussed the packages and issues remaining with us from our last meeting and the letters of agreement we have been working with in negotiations. Neither side felt ready to fully respond to the other on these items. During a break in the proceedings Ron McGee explained how mediation will work and what his role will be.

The State negotiating team gave us two packages which, if adopted, would take us back to current contract language on most of the items covered. Their additional proposals covering work clothing, boots, tools and safety glasses were so narrowly focused and sidestepped so much of what we have been discussing and working for in negotiations that we could only express our dissatisfaction and anger with their offers. When pushed to respond to our real needs, Tom Perry said that they “do not believe that anything is broken in these articles” and added that “we do not see what isn’t working.” This response comes after many months of hard work and presentations by our bargaining team, exchanges of proposals, testimony by workers directly affected by the problems we have been pointing out and some common-sense arguments advanced by our team which are aimed at increasing State efficiencies and savings.

Taken together, they have rejected our proposals on overtime, work schedule premium pay, education and promotional opportunities, allowances for protective clothing and tools, meal allowances, work schedules and sensitive and difficult customers. Many of their counter-proposals, if adopted, would divide our membership and make agencies less flexible and less willing to adapt and adopt better practices.

When we questioned the State team about their proposals we got only vague responses. We asked how emergency calls to Fish and Wildlife agency workers might be handled if the calls were not answered by Union-represented workers and they said that they do not know. We asked if people now currently working for free by answering emergency calls from home would be paid overtime and got contradictory responses. We asked how many management positions and how many Union-represented positions have been filled through upward mobility and career development planning and we were told that they had no idea. We asked why the State team’s offers on boots and tool reimbursements and protective eyewear were either pegged so low or excluded certain agencies and classifications and we did not get a definitive answer. We offered a cost-effective compromise on safety glasses and were put off.

Cory McIntosh (DMV), Kermit Meling (ODOT) and Bob Fields (Forestry) made concluding remarks and our team then left negotiations.

Negotiations will resume on Monday, June 4 at 6:30 pm at the ODOT training center on 19^th Street in Salem. We expect to make full use of the mediator assigned to us. As always, we will meet at our Salem Union hall by 5:00 pm for a meal and discussion.

Between now and our session on the 4^th we need stories from people at Fish and Wildlife detailing how their agency has denied people a choice between taking cash or comp time for overtime worked. We need all of our Coalition activists to think about how they and others in their worksites respond to after-hours calls from managers about work and be prepared to discuss these responses at negotiations. We need first-person stories dealing with the lack of education, training and development in ODOT Coalition agencies and off-the-street hiring and promotions. And we need members from ODOT Coalition agencies to show up at negotiations, show solidarity and help us make our case for better contract language.

Our ODOT Coalition Bargaining Co-chairs will work on a response to the last package the State team presented to us. Our team left negotiations in a spirit of righteous anger before responding to this disappointing package.

Special mention should go to Bob Fields (Forestry), the ODOT workers from Salem and Portland, Terry Farrell (ODFW), Lorrie Schaeffer (ODOT) and Jim Harvey (ODFW) for their work at this negotiating session.