We have a small union. That is a fact. This is due to a
variety of factors – lack of education, unmotivational leader, lack of
unification, optimism on how nice the management council would be if we didn’t
have a union (short term memory of other departments getting screwed), the fact
people get to leech benefits for no cost. I can tell you that I have prevented
an employee of getting fired. I can tell you that punishments are more level
and documented when a union rep is there. I can tell you that management didn’t
want to pay us for on-call, and there first official offer was $1 for the
entire period of 4 hours - not $1 an hour, but $1 for the whole 4 hours. I can
tell you that our sick policy would be chaos if we didn’t have a union, that it
would only be applied based on favoritism. I can tell you we got more vacation
for 2018 only because we have a union... But everyone at Metro gets that.
Whether it is fair that Union members and charity receivers is a different
debate, and doesn’t change the reality. I often say if Union membership goes 8
or below I am stepping down, or I am moving to dissolve it. Then we will see
how nice Mayor Huether (or the next mayor who has to write a budget) is to
employees under his care, without protections. If any of you have any ideas to
get this wheel spinning more let me know. I don’t want people to feel that the
union is pointless, because it isn’t.
So there is my small rant… but why? So after emphasizing the
abstractness of the union that you have to trust me on, I have something
concrete. The Union has direct member influence on the schedule.
Hopefully your shift representatives have spoken to you
about the new schedule proposals. I have emphasized that a majority want to
stay the same but move it back 1 hour. (If there something that has an obvious
majority I have found it is go back to 0600-1400 1400-2200
2200-0600)
The schedules presented have a lot of contingency on having
to have the contract change.
Article 5 Section 2 – Workweek – Our contract has 40 hour workweek
for overtime computation, which is law. It also establishes are work week
Monday through Sunday. This is something that an admin person wants to look at
to lower amount of built in overtime in the schedule.
Definitions – On-Call… We have it defined as the period
prior to the start of a regularly scheduled shift. All the proposed schedules
want to change the time an employee is on call.
Article 4 Section 9 – On-Call Pay – Compensation for on-call
right now is $2.50 an hour on call. There are talks of wanting to change that
to .5-1 hour of ETO for a 4 hour period. Right now when we are called in for
on-call we have guaranteed overtime. Management did not want that… and they
still don’t. If we have a new schedule that has more people on-call one of the
conditions given was they want to get rid of the guaranteed overtime. In order
not stop all conversation I said the neutral “We will see what the members want”
“That can possibly be arranged.”
So what it comes down to is… In order to directly change the
contract the union decides. I feel the best way to handle it is a vote… but do
we want a run-off vote where each options get points, do we want to flip a coin. Know that when a schedule is changed it is hard to change back.
Let me know people, I am not alone here.
