Managements War on Full-Time Jobs

A great deal of the summer has been dealing with management’s war on full-time duty assignments.  Since May, management has been working on complying with its Function 1 Labor Scheduler.  There were numerous revisions of the proposals and changing numbers of total of full-time positions.  Management chose for most of the process to do this without input from the Union, which usually occurs to ensure compliance with the Contract.  So, they have issued and reissued letters to employees affected numerous times.  Just over the weekend the last of this layered process was provided to the Union. This is the reposting of duty assignments.  The letters were reviewed and mistakes were pointed out to management.  They initially stated these would be posted in the September bid process for the St. Paul Installation.  The Union has many objections to what has occurred to its members and believes the “earned” workload determined by the Function 1 Labor Scheduler is not based on Contractual requirements. We are determined to fight this process in the grievance arbitration process.

I have attempted to communicate with members in the St Paul Installation when there has been concrete information to provide.  The problem most of the time, management provided information and stated this is not the final and they are still processing revisions of the plan.  The process has been extremely frustrating to say the least as management provides us reversions many times a week.  We will commit when we have information we will get it sent out as soon as possible through a Flash Bulletin.

When management started reverted duty assignments in April and May we filed grievances disputing the reversions.  These grievances have been appealed to Step 3 of the grievance arbitration process.  NBA Willie Mellen is now scheduling some of these case for arbitration.  We are being told a case could be heard as early as early October.  We will keep you updated on the status of these cases and the results of the arbitration process.

The end of the month the St. Paul Area Local will be sending 10 people to National APWU Craft Conference in Las Vegas. This conference is held in Las Vegas every other year.  All crafts will be represented of the St. Paul Area Local.  It will be a time for training, discussing, a proposing for our future.