Looking For You

Job Terminations Due To Illness & Disability

I am looking for a member of ODOT Local 730 to become a subject matter expert on Illness and Disability discharges. It would be expected that this person would get to know our Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), ODOT & DAS relevant policies & a passing familiarity with the applicable BOLI regulations.

At this point, these type of discharges do not happen every week, maybe not even every month, but they are occurring & we are hearing about more of them than before. This person is to be a resource for stewards and organizers who work for our members. This volunteer is not to represent any of these affected members. Nor are they to do any representation work. I will work to shield this person from asks for other service to our Union. If you wanted to eventually move into other areas – that would be great once you were comfortable with the time required for this role.
Your Local wants to have confidence that we are giving our members the best advice and have reliable source material for workers who are facing discharge for reasons largely beyond their control. For instance: A TMC in western Oregon sustained a disabling knee injury while on the job. Many surgeries and much down time later it was not certain that this individual would be able to return to the prior job. The agency helped to find job retraining which this employee gladly took. . . Here is the catch: By accepting the retraining, BOLI says you cut all ties to your former job & there is no promise of a job opportunity at the end of the retraining. After talking to a number of folks at the agency it is not clear that all concerned, including some Human Resources folks, were aware of these conditions. And two months later no one from the agency has been able to show me that our member was informed of these conditions.
What do we tell a member with cancer? Or the good 15 year employee with advanced diabetes? The TMS 2 who looks perfectly healthy but his doctor will not renew his CDL because of a heart murmur?
It may be that there are no good alternatives for some of these cases. There will probably never be a perfect settlement for Our Member. I want to know for sure; and I want Our Member to know that we are studying the matter and can provide them a second source for information. A Member Run Union means informed members at every level. We build our membership one member at a time. Our Local gains those members when we gain their trust. We gain that trust as we show that we are reliable.

If you think you might be interested & this seems like a tall order. . . you will not be working alone. The ODOT Local 730 officers and activists have some experience and even more important: We know where to look and who to start asking. Our mothership, SEIU 503 has an excellent legal staff and organizing staff with experience from around the nation; organizers who can measure their experience in decades.
So why does ODOT Local 730 want an expert? SEIU 503 represents 40,000 members in 85 agencies and non-profits. Our Local is less than 2000 of them. And the 503 staff is about 10% of that. It makes sense to have a resource person in Our Local. It makes sense to not have 2000 (or 40,000) members calling the legal department.

Stewards and Organizers have stories of helping folks through these hard transitions. Again, almost never is the end result what we would have wanted. In many, many of these cases our fellow crew members were thankful for someone to help them though the process: not being forced to go through the process alone.

Give it some thought. Let me know if you have questions.

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