The 23 July 2011 Bargaining Conference is done. The bargaining delegates from all coalitions voted to send the Tentative Agreement (TA) Contract to the members with a recommendation to approve (ratify). This includes the Central Table (pay and benefits) and all of the Coalition Table negotiated agreements.
Some of the main points include:
Cost of Living Allowances, Article 27, 1.5% increase December of 2011; 1.45% increase January of 2013;
½ Step increase on your Salary Eligibility Date (SED) on or after July 2012 and the other ½ Step increase 6 months later, but no later than 30 June 2013. Employees who have received step increases as of 1 June 2011 will not receive another. They also will not be rolled back as in the last contract;
Furlough days, Letter of Agreement for Mandatory Unpaid Time Off (MUTO), much the same as last contract – 10, 12 or 14 days during the two years of the contract. There are some changes to how they are taken. There are two LOAs for furlough days: 191 for how many days – at which pay levels and 193 for implementation. In implementation those folks who work alternate shifts will no longer need to use vacation time to accomodate the 8 hour blocks. The 8 hour blocks went away. The letter lays out that you take your furlough days in your normal shifts. You will need to take the remainder of your furlough time in a partial day. So if you work 8 hour, 9 hour or 10 hour shifts that is how you will use your furlough days. There is also added flexibility in that “employees may volunteer to take unpaid holidays, unpaid vacation days, or a salary reduction. . .”;
In Coalition Bargaining (Article #.3) there are also some improvements. Article 36.3AC (Travel) now has the living language provisions so the non-commercial per diem automatically updates. All per diems used to require increasing or adjusting at the bargaining tables.
Article 58 and Article 58.3 (Holidays) both have some changes. The ‘each and every’ language has been deleted in 58. There is new comp time language in 58.3. Also, there was holiday language in our old 90.3; that has been deleted from 90.3, all holiday language is in 58.3. In theory.
Article 90.3A will have several changes. An LOA was written in 2009 regarding Penalty Pay for schedule changes without notice; most of that LOA has been moved into 90.3. Moved into base language was the LOA regarding missed breaks for the Transportation Operations Centers and the Interstate Bridge crews. There is new language for Motor Carrier Enforcement Officers when helping with road closures.
There is a new LOA regarding holidays and flexing work schedules to prevent loosing 2 hours of vacation on holidays.
The email I sent you will have bullet sheets as attachments so you can review the summaries of both the Central Table and Coalition table changes. There is more, much more there.
The bargaining conference was a little rowdy. Every bargaining conference has some vocal members who want to strike. Every new contract insults someone along the way. Fair and comprehensive negotiations rarely result in all persons, on both sides, being happy with the results. The Central Table bargaining team members are not pleased with some of the results. Frequently, when the State bargaining team does not want to agree to our point they claim to not understand. Some of the points our team made regarding pay and insurance were absolutely rooted in mathematical logic. Mathematics is either correct or incorrect. Our team showed mathematically correct ways to save money or make the same dollars do more. Many of the State bargaining team members have jobs that are number working jobs. For their leadership to have said they do not understand the numbers is to say they do not understand multiplication and division.
I believe the governor was always behind every decision. I know he has definite goals regarding health care and health insurance. In some way Our Union’s sense of fairness does not fit his goals. At Central Table Bargaining neither the Governor nor his Bargaining Team were straight forward about this. They would only talk about a finite dollar value that was not enough or they did not understand what we were saying.
Perhaps the bargaining table is not the place discuss matters in a straight forward manner.
There will be a ballot coming to you, coming to all members. The decision will be to ratify the contract. If you vote to ratify the contract, then you accept it. If you vote to not ratify the contract then you vote to possibly go out on strike. To fail to ratify does not guarantee a strike. It only guarantees that the bargaining delegates must come together and explore the options.
Look around you. Do you know your crew? Do you know others on crews around you? Can everyone afford to strike? How long can you & they afford to strike?
I want you to vote as you think is correct. I will vote to ratify. The next big fight in the Legislature and the press is our retirement. I want SEIU 503, OPEU to gear up and start on Monday to protect PERS, the 6% pickup (that we bargained for instead of a pay raise, in years past) and our member’s future.
Thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing this information with your crews. I am sure 503 will have more information on the 503 website next week. Everyone was tired and went home after the meeting on Saturday and the actual bargaining until eleven or twelve Friday night. As always it will take several months to proof read and publish the contracts. Hopefully they will be available on-line at the 503 website before then. I continue to insist that hardcopies be available for worksites where employees do not use a computer to make a living.
We, you and I are the face of Our Union. This hard work is Member Organizing. Thank you for your work. mac
Showing posts with label member organizing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label member organizing. Show all posts
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Monday, July 6, 2009
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.
mac
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Creating A Better World, Member Organizers
Union advocates cite statistics that point to the decline in Union membership in our lifetime. A number frequently used is only 12% of American Labor is unionized; down 35% in 30 years.
I wonder about that statistic. Not the validity of it. Numbers are numbers. It is obvious from the culture changes I have lived through and the change in the stories of Working Class guys & gals, that unions do not play the same role as they did in the 1950’s.
I wonder what those Union guys & gals of the 50’s & 60’s taught their children. Did they teach their families that Union jobs were the future? Did they help their children see a Union job as a worthy goal?
Or . . . did our parents and grandparents aspirations for the next generation tend towards doctors, lawyers and managers?
My father was an accountant. Working for Oregon Steel, office staff was not unionized, he saw up close the benefits of belonging to a Union. He taught me about those benefits decades before he ever had the opportunity to belong to a Union.
If these past laborers were not teaching and preaching Unions, why not? I believe wanting their children to be doctors and lawyers was only part of the answer; and not the most important part.
The history of several union organizations was organizers doing everything for the members. Those unions had organizers (business agents) that made sure every new employee was introduced to the union and the reasons why. Before the days of direct deposit and automatic withdraws the business agent came around to each and every members house or flat to collect their dues. Union organizers negotiated collective bargaining agreements, sometimes without members present. They did everything. Union members let them.
Our Union adopted, by a vote of the members, a different organizing model. The old model was a ‘business agent’ model. We got by, but we never had enough business agents, organizers. Members needed to step up to fill the gaps. Several years ago We adopted a Member Organizer model. We are the members, the organizers.
No one knows the worksite like the worker: Us. We know the issues. We live and work the issues. We know that some issues are unique to our shop. We know that some issues are common to all offices.
Our members are the subject matter experts. We are the best witnesses in the Oregon Legislature when our legislators need to know more about the state of our services. We know our clients better than most. We know where the resources are and are not. We walk our parks and drive our highways every day. We know not only where the wildlife live, we know how many live there. We are our state’s best advocate. We can be our own best advocate.
There are more than a few who do not advocate, do not appreciate this new organizing model. Some still want their organizer to do the work of the Union. They want their money’s worth. This brings me back to the Union members of the past generations; those Union members who did not teach their kids about their Unions. I said that wanting their children to do other work was not the most important part of why they did not teach the Union.
What could be worse than not having a Union to stand by you, is having a union that does not hear you. A union that is not interested in what you think. Imagine having an automated job where the boss does not want your input. Add to that a union that collects your dues, bargains your contracts and decides whether or not to air your grievances without you.
The most important part of the story is they wanted their children to work where they had a say; where they could help create the product, the service. They wanted their inheritors to have the opportunity to create a better world, not just take orders. Those who did not teach their children about their union did not see the union as being about them. Those workers did not help create their union; they did not help organize their world.
Our Union wants your input. ODOT Local 730, SEIU 503, OPEU is always looking for more members to decide to become Member Organizers. Our Member Organizers act as shop stewards. We work in the Union’s legislative & executive bodies: General Council and the Board of Directors. Through CAPE our members work the political process. Member Organizers work out of state helping other workers find their voices. We need Member Organizers to work in our home towns and community actions centers.
I can tell you that working in our Union feels like community. Many folks going different directions, doing different jobs for the same purpose: to improve the lives of laborers. To create a better community, a better world.
If you are looking to create your world, we are looking for you. mac
I wonder about that statistic. Not the validity of it. Numbers are numbers. It is obvious from the culture changes I have lived through and the change in the stories of Working Class guys & gals, that unions do not play the same role as they did in the 1950’s.
I wonder what those Union guys & gals of the 50’s & 60’s taught their children. Did they teach their families that Union jobs were the future? Did they help their children see a Union job as a worthy goal?
Or . . . did our parents and grandparents aspirations for the next generation tend towards doctors, lawyers and managers?
My father was an accountant. Working for Oregon Steel, office staff was not unionized, he saw up close the benefits of belonging to a Union. He taught me about those benefits decades before he ever had the opportunity to belong to a Union.
If these past laborers were not teaching and preaching Unions, why not? I believe wanting their children to be doctors and lawyers was only part of the answer; and not the most important part.
The history of several union organizations was organizers doing everything for the members. Those unions had organizers (business agents) that made sure every new employee was introduced to the union and the reasons why. Before the days of direct deposit and automatic withdraws the business agent came around to each and every members house or flat to collect their dues. Union organizers negotiated collective bargaining agreements, sometimes without members present. They did everything. Union members let them.
Our Union adopted, by a vote of the members, a different organizing model. The old model was a ‘business agent’ model. We got by, but we never had enough business agents, organizers. Members needed to step up to fill the gaps. Several years ago We adopted a Member Organizer model. We are the members, the organizers.
No one knows the worksite like the worker: Us. We know the issues. We live and work the issues. We know that some issues are unique to our shop. We know that some issues are common to all offices.
Our members are the subject matter experts. We are the best witnesses in the Oregon Legislature when our legislators need to know more about the state of our services. We know our clients better than most. We know where the resources are and are not. We walk our parks and drive our highways every day. We know not only where the wildlife live, we know how many live there. We are our state’s best advocate. We can be our own best advocate.
There are more than a few who do not advocate, do not appreciate this new organizing model. Some still want their organizer to do the work of the Union. They want their money’s worth. This brings me back to the Union members of the past generations; those Union members who did not teach their kids about their Unions. I said that wanting their children to do other work was not the most important part of why they did not teach the Union.
What could be worse than not having a Union to stand by you, is having a union that does not hear you. A union that is not interested in what you think. Imagine having an automated job where the boss does not want your input. Add to that a union that collects your dues, bargains your contracts and decides whether or not to air your grievances without you.
The most important part of the story is they wanted their children to work where they had a say; where they could help create the product, the service. They wanted their inheritors to have the opportunity to create a better world, not just take orders. Those who did not teach their children about their union did not see the union as being about them. Those workers did not help create their union; they did not help organize their world.
Our Union wants your input. ODOT Local 730, SEIU 503, OPEU is always looking for more members to decide to become Member Organizers. Our Member Organizers act as shop stewards. We work in the Union’s legislative & executive bodies: General Council and the Board of Directors. Through CAPE our members work the political process. Member Organizers work out of state helping other workers find their voices. We need Member Organizers to work in our home towns and community actions centers.
I can tell you that working in our Union feels like community. Many folks going different directions, doing different jobs for the same purpose: to improve the lives of laborers. To create a better community, a better world.
If you are looking to create your world, we are looking for you. mac
Friday, February 22, 2008
The Bully Boss
The Bully Boss. We have all heard that phrase or something like it. We all have our own definitions of what it means. Boil it all down and it is a supervisor who acts inappropriately. It may be as intense as the boss who really is physically threatening or as low key as the leader who never says anything directly but drops lots of clues.
Every large enterprise has one (or more) from time to time and our Agency is no exception. There are several things required for a bully boss to exist.
The first thing is little or no training. Many ODOT employees are folks who job driven; tell them what to do and then get out of the way. They are mission oriented; get it done. The mission is more important than communication skills, more important than personnel skills. Many of these folks do well and invite increasing responsibility. With responsibility comes authority.
The second ingredient for the existence of a bully boss is fear. Fear is a two way street. Obviously there may be fear of the boss by those who work for him or her. Fear may also drive the bully boss. Fear of not getting the job done. Fear of work quality issues. Budget concerns. Timelines. Fear of failure.
The third and possibly the largest contributor to bully bosses is silence. Peers and workers not letting the supervisor know how their actions are perceived allows that supervisor to say she or he did not know. Not setting boundaries for acceptable behavior may encourage the bullying to continue and increase.
On 16 December 2007 I posted an article about ODOT crews in South Eastern Oregon and their story of dealing with a bully boss. There are other stories. Last weekend, at Astoria, leaders and organizers in our Union discussed how we might help our membership to deal with the bully boss. This blog is our first step. This blog is a two-way communication. It can be anonymous if desired. A separate page has been opened in this blog to deal with this issue. Local members can post their concerns & ask questions.
What would you like to see? What information would help you deal with a bully boss? If you currently work with an abusive superior – how can your Local help?
Finally, in our statewide labor management meetings we have been pushing for more training, both for managers and for those in Labor who desire to become managers. Invest in our people before we promote. For me it is a hard thing to argue that we need to promote from within and then argue against a former Union member, now a manager, who is in over their head.
I encourage you to not allow ignorance, fear and silence make our good jobs miserable.
mac
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Courage to Speak Truth
ODOT Local 730 members in South Eastern Oregon stood together against a bully boss and prevailed. Transportation Maintenance Specialists from the Jordan Valley and Basque Station crews had the courage to speak up when a new manager arrived and failed to treat them with common respect. The new manager who was still in the probationary period eventually returned to his prior position.
Crew members reported that from the first day he made it clear that he was friends with several layers of management and would not be removed from this job. He attempted to intimidate these employees by taking them for one on one drives in his agency assigned pick-up to tell them how it was ‘going to be’. They were warned not to go talking to the Union, “if they thought they had problems now, just talk to the Union”. Nor were they to talk to their friends in Safety. During one of several one on one drives, a member was told that the agency was looking to decrease the size of the crew by one or more positions. This employee was warned that a person talking to the Union could be ‘downsized‘.
These Union Members chose to unite and showed the courage to stand up to this intimidation. With the help of the Burns Maintenance Crew shop steward, Tom McCulloch, TMS2, and SEIU 503, OPEU Bend area organizer Sara Routt, these folks found their voice and clarified their concerns. They talked with the District Manager and made these concerns known. The District Manager made several trips to the area to hear these employees, on all shifts.
There has been a discussion on this blog of Member Organizing. This is a good example. These folks of the Owyhee Watershed reached out to other ODOT Local 730 Members and the Union. When an attempt was made to divide them they chose to talk to each other and had the courage to speak to the upline manager. It is that simple. These members understood better than anyone what their issues were and they worked to resolve them. My hat is off to them.
This same kind of work is being done in other places around our agency. In the opposite corner of the state, the North Coast highway maintenance workers on several crews have raised concerns about decisions being made and apparent agency policy violations for several years. These members felt that they were not being heard or taken seriously. When they could not get help locally they reached outside the area and brought their concerns to Salem.
It was not easy. Several of their issues had been on-going for years. Some of the crew members were not comfortable talking about them. They did not like it, but they wanted to just get the work done and go home. Crews had been divided by rumors and stories told by managers. Some did not talk to each other when they saw each other in the grocery store.
Again, these crews reached out to the Union and other ODOT Local 730 Members. Local 730 officers Bart Cotta, Statewide Chief Steward and Kermit Meling, Vice President, along with SEIU 503 organizers Colleen Sullivan and Troy Barnardt helped them clarify what the issues were. Bart asked them to think about what they wanted the future to look like. Keep a record of the past but Look to the Future.
There is currently an audit taking place in this region. Change is coming.
Oregon is our State. ODOT is our agency. Sometimes it takes courage to take responsibility for our worksites. Our brother and sisters in these areas have shown us how.
mac
Crew members reported that from the first day he made it clear that he was friends with several layers of management and would not be removed from this job. He attempted to intimidate these employees by taking them for one on one drives in his agency assigned pick-up to tell them how it was ‘going to be’. They were warned not to go talking to the Union, “if they thought they had problems now, just talk to the Union”. Nor were they to talk to their friends in Safety. During one of several one on one drives, a member was told that the agency was looking to decrease the size of the crew by one or more positions. This employee was warned that a person talking to the Union could be ‘downsized‘.
These Union Members chose to unite and showed the courage to stand up to this intimidation. With the help of the Burns Maintenance Crew shop steward, Tom McCulloch, TMS2, and SEIU 503, OPEU Bend area organizer Sara Routt, these folks found their voice and clarified their concerns. They talked with the District Manager and made these concerns known. The District Manager made several trips to the area to hear these employees, on all shifts.
There has been a discussion on this blog of Member Organizing. This is a good example. These folks of the Owyhee Watershed reached out to other ODOT Local 730 Members and the Union. When an attempt was made to divide them they chose to talk to each other and had the courage to speak to the upline manager. It is that simple. These members understood better than anyone what their issues were and they worked to resolve them. My hat is off to them.
This same kind of work is being done in other places around our agency. In the opposite corner of the state, the North Coast highway maintenance workers on several crews have raised concerns about decisions being made and apparent agency policy violations for several years. These members felt that they were not being heard or taken seriously. When they could not get help locally they reached outside the area and brought their concerns to Salem.
It was not easy. Several of their issues had been on-going for years. Some of the crew members were not comfortable talking about them. They did not like it, but they wanted to just get the work done and go home. Crews had been divided by rumors and stories told by managers. Some did not talk to each other when they saw each other in the grocery store.
Again, these crews reached out to the Union and other ODOT Local 730 Members. Local 730 officers Bart Cotta, Statewide Chief Steward and Kermit Meling, Vice President, along with SEIU 503 organizers Colleen Sullivan and Troy Barnardt helped them clarify what the issues were. Bart asked them to think about what they wanted the future to look like. Keep a record of the past but Look to the Future.
There is currently an audit taking place in this region. Change is coming.
Oregon is our State. ODOT is our agency. Sometimes it takes courage to take responsibility for our worksites. Our brother and sisters in these areas have shown us how.
mac
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