All,
I hope everyone is having a good week. I know that you are all probably wondering what the hell is going on with the bid. Well I share your frustrations with the delay and I wanted to give you an update on that right off the bat.
2019 Bid
We have discovered a conflict in the 2019 Leave MOU. At the conclusion of round 1 we are supposed to reduce the available leave slots to the maximum amount allowed for our area based off of what everyone earns. That number is 700 slots. The scheduling department had a very different number but I think we managed to get that squared away. So, in round 1, the D area bid 281 of our total allowed 700 slots. That means we have 419 slots left that we can bid. The leave calendar with 3 slots per day totals 1,089 slots. So to reduce down the actual total of leave our area will earn, we need to remove 389 slots to get our total leave available down to 700 total slots.
Here is where the challenge comes in…in round 2, the MOU guarantees that everyone will have an opportunity to bid 5 consecutive days. Well if we reduce by 389 slots, it becomes almost impossible to guarantee that everyone will have that opportunity. While it is technically possible for it to happen, it would require a little luck. If someone bid in an abnormal way, for example, if their RDOs are Mon/Tues and they bid Sat, Sun, Wed, Thurs, Fri they will have wiped out a whole section of days which could prevent someone from being able to bid 5 consecutive days. This is a gamble that I am not willing to take. If we take this gamble and then person number 30 in seniority is unable to find 5 consecutive days then what? A re bid? Not acceptable to me.
So…until we can come up with a way to rectify this, the bid is on hold UFN. Alex is going to be meeting with Don Hill today to try to see what we can figure out and I will let you all know as soon as I hear anything.
AWS Requests (Dream Sheets)
Make sure you get these in to me no later than Wednesday 10/31 or, as it is known, All Hallows’ Eve. Place them either in my mail slot by the lockers or directly into my hands.
Break Policy
Rumor has it that mgmt is looking to institute some type of break policy. Unfortunately, I think this is the type of behavior we have to look forward to now that the higher levels of mgmt know they have support from an administration that does not support labor unions. Any instituting of a break policy would be a change in working conditions and hopefully we would be able to come up with some sort of mitigation for it if they try to do that. Usually when they try this type of thing it is because they are unwilling to actually manage their resources and pay attention to what is going on in the operation. So just keep in mind that if your 1+10 break pushes someone over 2 hours, that is going to be scrutinized. As long as we are being reasonable and looking out for each other, they have no reason to pick this fight with us. As always, please let me know if you catch even a whiff of them actually implementing a break policy.
That’s all I have this week. Don’t hesitate to contact me directly with any issues or questions.
In Solidarity,
Drew
503.593.8178